Notes. Pyemotes ventricosus, the type species of the genus, is poorly described and probably was misidentified by subsequent workers. Oudemans (1937) speculated that the fungal disease of the bee larvae reported by Frison (1923) for Anthophora abrupta Say, 1837 in the United States, is in fact physogastric females of Pyemotes ventricosus. Lichtenstein (1875) reported "Heteropus ventricosus" from larvae of Anthidiellum strigatum (Panzer, 1805)
(as Anthidium strigatum Panz) and Osmia sp. and other insects. Brucker (1900) reported a mite identified as P. ventricosus parasitizing Anthophora fulvitarsis Brullé, 1832 along with beetles of the genus Anobium and Eumeles wasps in France. Earlier beekeeping literature report this species attacking developing larvae of the European honeybee, and, in some cases, destroying an entire bee colony in three days (Goodacre 1938). For example, P. ventricosus was recorded from bee’s larvae and pupae in Tunisia (Brucker, 1900), in France on worker bees and drones (Suire 1930), on bee larvae died from the sacbrood disease in Switzerland (Morgenthaler 1922), in Germany (Borchert 1966), former Czechoslovakia (Rytíř 1937), Poland (Banaszak 1980, Chmielewski 1991, Tomaszewska and Zahaczewska 1973), Bulgaria, the former USSR (Grobov, 1978), and Australia on adults, pupae, and larvae (Goodacre 1938). However, Cross and Moser (1975) suggested that Pyemotes ventricosus is only known from the original description and has never been recollected. Pyemotes anobii or P. tritici amy be involved here (Eickwort 1990).
Hosts. Anthophora retusa (Linnaeus, 1758) (see Notes)
Newport, G. 1850. Further observations on the habits of Monodontomerus; with some account of a new Acarus, Heteropus ventricosus, a parasite in the nests of Anthophora retusa. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London.2: 70-71.
