How it breeds

A mature female mite, a foundress, slips into a brood cell in the hours before a nurse bee seals it, and begins feeding on the larva inside within about six hours of capping. Her first egg becomes a son; every roughly thirty hours after that she lays a daughter, and a daughter mates with her own brother before the cell ever opens.

Worker brood stays capped about twelve days, long enough for one, sometimes two, mated daughters to complete development. Drone brood stays capped fourteen to fifteen days, a longer window that lets a foundress raise two to three mated daughters instead of one.