Varroa destructor on a honeybee
Jon Gascoyne/Flickr
A new paper in Scientific Reports by Genesis Chong-Echavez and Boris Baer of the University of California, Riverside, casually refutes creationism by showing evolution in progress. It describes how honeybees, Apis mellifera, are evolving to survive in the presence of a serious parasite, the Varroa mite, Varroa destructor. And, no doubt to the consternation of any creationists who understand the implications, it also illustrates how evolutionary arms races are a major driver of adaptation. Both parasites and arms races are deeply embarrassing for creationism because they make little sense as the products of an intelligent designer. Indeed, parasites conform to the Discovery Institute’s supposed “proof” of intelligent design only if that designer is malevolent; yet if parasites are dismissed as evidence of design, creationists are simply abandoning one of their own favourite arguments.
In other words, a parasite-host arms race is a paradox that creationism cannot resolve, whereas evolutionary theory not only explains it, but is strengthened by it. The paper concerns a Southern Californian hybrid population of honeybees with ancestry from Western European, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and African lineages. These bees are showing resistance to the Varroa mite, a parasite that has played a major role in the catastrophic losses of managed honeybee colonies in the United States, where beekeepers reported losses of up to 62% in 2025.
The researchers monitored 236 colonies over four years and found that the Californian hybrid colonies consistently had lower mite infestation rates than colonies headed by commercial queens. In the UCR summary of the work, the hybrid colonies are described as having about 68% fewer mites on average and as being more than five times less likely to cross the treatment threshold at which chemical control becomes necessary. Laboratory experiments also showed that the mites were less attracted to larvae from these hybrid bees, especially at the stage when mites would normally be most likely to invade brood cells.
The usual creationist response to examples like this is to retreat into a parody definition of evolution involving a change in “kind”, with “kind” carefully left undefined, or to fall back on Bible-literalist theology and explain parasites as the result of “sin”, by some unexplained mechanism against which their creator appears curiously powerless. But the problem of arms races remains. On that view, creationism’s single designer seems to be competing with itself, continually redesigning solutions to problems of its own making, ad infinitum. Evolutionary biology, by contrast, has no such difficulty. It predicts exactly this kind of reciprocal adaptation between parasite and host.
What is the Varroa mite? The Varroa mite, Varroa destructor, is a tiny parasite that helps expose one of creationism’s biggest problems. It is one of the most destructive enemies of honey bees and a major cause of colony collapse worldwide. Originally associated with the Asian honey bee, it successfully switched to the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, where it has become a devastating pest. That is not what intelligent, benevolent design looks like; it is exactly what evolution looks like. [1] Female mites reproduce inside sealed brood cells and hitch rides on adult bees, spreading through and between colonies. Worse still, they do not merely sip a little insect “blood”, as was once thought. They feed mainly on the bee’s fat body tissue, damaging systems essential for immunity, metabolism and survival, while also transmitting dangerous viruses such as deformed wing virus. In other words, this is a parasite exquisitely adapted to exploit and weaken its host — which is awkward for anyone claiming parasites are evidence of a wise designer. [2] As colonies produce more brood, mite populations can explode, sometimes overwhelming and killing the colony if beekeepers do not intervene. So when a population of bees evolves resistance to varroa, what we are seeing is not stasis, not “created kinds”, and certainly not perfection. We are watching natural selection in real time, as hosts and parasites drive one another through an evolutionary arms race that creationism cannot explain, but evolution predicts perfectly. [3]The discovery by the two University of California, Riverside scientists is the subject of an article in Riverside News by Jules Bernstein:
SoCal honeybees can fend off deadly mites
SoCal honeybees can fend off deadly mites
Southern California is home to a flying black and yellow treasure. While commercial honeybee hives nationwide are collapsing under attack from deadly parasites, a unique hybrid bee found only in this part of the state has demonstrated the ability to survive.
U.S. beekeepers reported losing up to 62% of their managed honeybee colonies in 2025, which threatens our food supply. The losses are driven by a combination of pesticides, climate pressure, habitat loss, and parasites, with the Varroa mite among the most destructive of these factors.
Varroa mites feed on honeybees’ fat body tissue, which weakens their immune systems, reduces their body weight, and shortens their lives. The fat body is an organ in a honeybee that stores energy, helps fight infections, and keeps the bee healthy, similar in some ways to the human liver.
The mites also act as vectors for deadly viruses like Deformed Wing Virus and Acute Bee Paralysis Virus, which they transmit directly into a bee’s bloodstream. Beekeepers rely on chemical treatments for suppression that can lose effectiveness over time.
A new study from UC Riverside published in Scientific Reports is the first to show that a locally adapted population of honeybees can naturally and consistently suppress the mites.
We kept hearing anecdotally that these Californian honeybees were surviving with way fewer treatments. I wanted to test them rigorously and understand the driving force behind what the beekeepers were seeing.
Genesis Chong-Echavez, lead author. Department of Entomology
Center for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER)
University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
Alongside entomologists from UCR’s Center for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER), Chong-Echavez monitored 236 honeybee colonies between 2019 and 2022.
The Californian bees were not entirely immune to the mites. However, colonies headed by locally raised Californian hybrid honeybee queens had about 68% fewer mites on average than colonies headed by commercial honeybee queens. They were also more than five times less likely to cross the threshold at which chemical treatments become necessary.
A Varroa mite on a developing honeybee larva inside a brood cell.Genesis Chong-Echavez/UCR.
The bees in the study are not a commercial breed. They come from a genetically mixed population of honeybees established in Southern California, often from feral colonies living in trees. Recent research shows they are a hybrid population with ancestry from at least four honeybee lineages, including African, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Western European bees.
To more fully understand the bees’ resistance to the mites, the researchers also ran laboratory experiments with developing honeybee larvae. Varroa mites must enter brood cells to reproduce, so the team tested whether mites were equally drawn to larvae from commercial and Californian hybrid honeybee colonies.
They were not.
Mites were less attracted to the Californian hybrid honeybee larvae, especially at seven days old, the stage when mites are normally most likely to invade. The finding suggests the bees’ secret to fending off mites lies in early development, before any adult worker behaviors might come into play.
What surprised me most was the differences showed up even at the larval stage. This suggests the resistance mechanism may go deeper than some kind of behavior and may be genetically built into the bees themselves.
Genesis Chong-Echavez.
The findings could have implications beyond Southern California. Honeybees pollinate crops worth billions of dollars and are under growing pressure from multiple environmental stressors. The research suggests that part of the answer to improving honeybee health may lie in the biology of these bees.
Researchers inspecting honeybee colonies as part of long-term monitoring of Varroa mite infestations.Genesis Chong-Echavez/UCR.
Boris Baer, UCR entomology professor and co-author of the study, said the study also highlights the value of listening to working beekeepers.
The researchers caution that the Californian hybrid honeybees are not entirely mite-free, and they do not suggest abandoning current management practices. Instead, they hope to learn which traits help these honeybees keep mite levels lower, and whether those traits could support future breeding programs or reduce dependence on chemicals.This question did not start in the lab. It started in conversations with beekeepers. They were not just observers; they helped shape the questions behind this research.
Boris Baer, co-corresponding author.
Department of Entomology
Center for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER)
University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.At a time when pollinators are facing global decline, this work offers a hopeful message: solutions may already be emerging in the field, and we just need to understand them.
Genesis Chong-Echavez.
Next, the team plans to investigate the genetic, behavioral, and chemical signals that may make the larvae less attractive to mites.
Publication:
Above all, this study fits the scientific definition of evolution perfectly. Evolution is not some cartoonish transformation from one mythical “kind” into another; it is a change in the genetic composition of a population over generations. That is exactly what is being observed here. A hybrid honey-bee population, drawing on inherited variation from several ancestral lineages, is showing greater resistance to Varroa destructor than standard commercial colonies. In other words, natural selection is favouring gene combinations that help bees survive a deadly parasite. That is evolution, plain and simple.
It also shows why parasites are such powerful engines of evolution. A parasite imposes relentless selection pressure: any host variant that reduces infestation, disrupts the parasite’s life cycle, or better survives infection gains an advantage and becomes more common. The result is an evolutionary arms race, with each side continually shaping the other. Creationism has no coherent explanation for why a supposedly intelligent designer would build such a system of reciprocal suffering and counter-measures, but evolutionary biology not only explains it, it predicts it.
And perhaps most awkwardly for anti-evolution arguments, this adaptation appears to have arisen not by some magical addition of “new information”, but by remixing variation already present in the population. Genes from Western European, Eastern European, Middle Eastern and African honey-bee lineages have been shuffled and selected into combinations that make these hybrid bees less vulnerable to varroa. So here, again, is a real-world example of evolution operating exactly as population genetics says it can: selection acting on existing heritable variation to produce a population better adapted to its environment. No miracle, no mystery, and no refuge at all for creationist wordplay about “kinds”.
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