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We investigated the relationships between the honey bee, Apis mellifera, and the parasitic mite Varroa jacobsoni in Mexico. In an 18-month survey of European honey bees (EHB) and Africanized honey bees (AHB), we showed that EHB were highly compatible with V. jacobsoni, while AHB were not as compatible. Furthermore, mite infertility ("parasite infectivity" factor), suspected to be the main factor of low AHB/V. jacobsoni compatibility in Brazil, was not observed in Mexico. The "intrinsic rate of natural increase" of mites did not differ significantly between host subspecies, indicating that the cause of low compatibility appears only at high parasite densities. The "carrying capacity" was twice as high in EHB as in AHB, indicating that the cause of low compatibility is possibly linked to honey bees' behavior. We hypothesize that the reason why V. jacobsoni is highly fertile on Mexican AHB (whereas it has low fertility on Brazilian AHB) may be that different strains of V. jacobsoni exist in the two countries Español