Cocoa production is impacted by the cacao swollen shoot virus (CSSV), a disease transmitted by insects such as mealybugs.  Mealybugs transmit the virus semi-persistently through their feeding.  They also undergo several developmental stages throughout their lifespan.  Across these stages, their feeding behavior, mobility, and movements between plants will vary potentially changing virus transmission in unexpected ways.  Motivated by this, in the present study, we develop mathematical representations of the disease to quantify how different life stages can influence transmission dynamics.  We first assume that all that mealybugs in all life stages are equally competent disease vectors only removing the adult male stage that cannot transmit the virus.  We compare this to the case where mealybugs are grouped into two subpopulations with different transmission behaviors, nymphs and adult females.  For both cases, we analyze the basic reproduction number (R0), which represents the average number of secondary infections produced by a single infected individual when introduced into a completely susceptible population.  The results show that accounting for life stage differences predicts a greater potential for the spread of disease.  We numerically explore how viral spread changes with key quantities, findings that a larger adult female population leads to a higher rate of viral transfer.  These results demonstrate that including life stage-specific dynamics increases understanding of CSSV transmission mechanisms.