Tag: Bee Moth

Despite clearing out so many cocoons last autumn we’re still finding that the odd bee moth is emerging from some hidden corner or another. We’ve had no more than half a dozen appear fluttering around the living room in the last month but recently they’ve been mainly the males so today when I found a female I took a closer look. When I spotted her by the back door, my first thought was that I’d found a snout moth because of the prominent palps projecting at the front, which the male lacks.

Bee moths, Aphomia sociella, feed on old cells and debris in the nests of bumble bees and wasps. Last summer we had literally thousands emerge via cracks in the floor when we had a bumble bees’ nest behind the air brick at the front of the house. They pupated, spinning tough sticky silken cocoons, often bunched together, in every dry, dark corner they could find. We ended up buying a new carpet!

Link: Bee moths make their first appearance in May last year.

We’ve been noticing little brown moths appearing mysteriously in our living room for the last few weeks, so nondescript that we didn’t even attempt to identify them before releasing them outside. They often appeared by the door so I was starting to suspect that they might be connected with the bumblebee nest behind the now defunct air-brick immediately beneath this corner of the room.

They’re bee moths, Aphomia sociella, the larva of which eat debris such as old wax cells in the nests of bees, which is a useful service for the bee except they will also eat bees’ brood. They pupate in tough silky cocoons, which can be found tucked away as a mass.