Occasionally, phoretic deutonymphs of Kuzinia can be found on other bees, wasps, other insects, and in rodent burrows (which can be nesting sites for bumble bees). One little-known species described in Kuzinia, Kuzinia sciurina, was reported from a squirrel nest, a non-bee association. "Kuzinia" recki, reported in forest litter, does not belong to Kuzinia.
In nests of bumble bees, Kuzinia laevis mites feed on pollen, honey, bumble bee cocoon material, nest organic debris (Chmielewski, 1969), nematodes, and fungi (R. W. Husband pers. comm. in Grobov, 1978), without any noticeable harmful effect on their hosts or at the boundary of being a harmless commensal and a pest (Chmielewski, 1969). Large numbers of mites, however, may be of concern for bumble bee colonies introduced for commercial pollination; these bees usually have low genetic variation and hence low disease resistance (Allen et al., 2007). In literature Kuzinia laevis has also been indicated as a potential pest of pollen harvested from honey bees by humans (Chmielewski, 1991b).