searching for possible association between six microsatellite markers and suppression of mite reproduction (smr) trait in honey bees

There are several candidates’ heritable traits in honey bees that can be selected to make colonies genetically resistant to varroa mites. this study was conducted to find an association between six microsatellite markers and suppression of the mite reproduction in honey bees. the study included two-phases. in the first phase, phenotypic measurement was done based on varroa mite reproduction success and included direct counting of the number of cells containing the mother mite that have successfully reproduced (fertility), the total number of offspring, and the number of offspring mites per mother mite (fecundity). in the second molecular genotyping phase, the polymerase chain reaction (pcr) was amplified using specific primers to investigate the polymorphism of six primers. the results showed that hq7622 and ko430 loci expressed the highest (6 alleles) and lowest (1 allele) number of alleles, respectively. interestingly, the hq7622 microsatellite marker was significantly associated with all studied traits (p<0.05). the effect of the hq7691 locus on the number of mother mites and the rate of mite infestation was significant (p<0.05). furthermore, un086 didn’t affect any of the measured phenotypic characteristics. the un334d locus significantly affected the number of mother mites and the rate of mite infestation (p<0.05). effect of un391 locus on maternal mite count (p<0.05), offspring mite count (p<0.01), total mite count (p<0.01), fertility (p<0.05), and the rate of mite infestation (p<0.05) was significant. on this basis, we demonstrated the importance of certain microsatellite markers for the genetic identification of bee colony resistance to varroa mites.