Galleria mellonella (Linnaeus, 1758)

Taxonomy

class Insecta → subclass Pterygota → infraclass Neoptera → superorder Holometabola → order Lepidoptera → superfamily Pyraloidea → family Pyralidae → subfamily Galleriinae → tribe Galleriini → genus Galleria → species Galleria mellonella

Species name(s)

Galleria mellonella (Linnaeus, 1758) = Phalaena (Tinea) mellonella Linnaeus, 1758 = Phalaena cereana Blom, 1764 = Tinea cerella Fabricius, 1775 = Galleria cerea Haworth, 1811 = Galleria cerealis Hübner, 1825 = Vindana obliquella Walker, 1866 = Galleria austrina Felder & Rogenhofer, 1875 = crombrugheela Dufrane, 1930 = mellomella. [9, 10]

Wax Moth.

urn:lsid:insecta.pro:taxonomy:9510

Expansion

Zoogeographical regions

Palaearctic.

Russia regions

#1. Kaliningradsky; #4. Evropeisky Severo-Zapadny; #7. Evropeisky yuzhno-tayozhny; #8. Evropeisky Tsentralny; #10. Sredne-Volzhsky; #11. Volgo-Donsky; #13. Zapadno-Kavkazsky; #16. Sredne-Uralsky; #17. Yuzhno-Uralsky; #36. Sredne-Amursky; #37. Nizhne-Amursky; #40. Primorsky.

Forewing length

11—14 mm.

Primary colors

Yellow, Brown/Gray/Black.

Detailed information with references

Distribution

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Hungary, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Corsica, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sardinia, Sicily, Slovakia, the Soviet Union - The European part of Turkey - European part, Finland, France, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Sweden, Estonia,Yugoslavia. [1].
Austria, Azores, Balearic Islands, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the British Isles, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece (mainland), Denmark (mainland), Ireland, Spain (mainland), Italy (mainland) , Canary Islands, Corsica, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madeira, Macedonia, Malta,Netherlands, Norway (mainland), the Channel Islands, Poland, Portugal (mainland), Romania, Russia, Sardinia, Sicily, Slovakia, Turkey (European part), Finland, France (mainland), Croatia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Sweden , Estonia. [10].
Regions of the Russian Federation: the Volga-Don, the European North-West, Central European, European southern taiga, the Western Caucasus, Kaliningrad, Nizhne-Amur, Seaside, Mid-Amur, the Volga-Average, Average Urals, South Ural. [3].

Imago Habitus and Differences from alike species

Length of front wing may be 1.1 and 1.4 cm. The color of the front wings are brown and gray, they spotted a fringe and black longitudinal strokes. Hind wings lighter front, with prominent veins. [5].
The size is very variable - from 15 to 35 mm wingspan. The front wings are purple-gray, the male is slightly brownish. Hind wings gray. [11].

General info about Imago

Fly bee bee moth far from dwellings, such as hives. [5].
As a rule, settled in the hive, the butterfly had already left. [11].

Imago lifespan

Several periods during the flight of the year. [5].

General info about Larva

Often brought before the death of the hive. [11].

Larva food plants / other food objects

Caterpillars feed on wax wax moths. [5].
The caterpillars live in hives, wax feed. When the wax is eaten by caterpillars begin to eat feces of previous generations of caterpillars, butterflies and outputting more and more shallow. [11].

Larva lifespan

Larvae live in the nests of bees and bumblebees in the intervals between periods of summer adult butterflies. [5].

Authors

Initial species uploading to the site: Peter Khramov.

Photos: Andrey Ponomarev.

Text data: Peter Khramov.

The species characteristics formalization: Peter Khramov.

References

[1] O. Karsholt, J. Razowski (eds.), 1996. The Lepidoptera of Europe: a distributional checklist
[3] Каталог чешуекрылых (Lepidoptera) России. Под ред. С. Ю. Синёва. СПб.; М.: Товарищество научных изданий КМК, 2008
[5] Райххолф-Рим Х. Бабочки. М.: Астрель, 2002
[9] Tree of Life (funet.fi), 2012
[10] de Jong, Y.S.D.M. (ed.) (2011) Fauna Europaea version 2.4 (faunaeur.org)
[11] Жизнь животных по А. Э. Брему. Т.2: Членистоногие. М.: Учпедгиз РСФСР, 1941