A story of subversion and ultimate destruction

(a beehive allegory)

I’ve had to deal with the destruction of a society in my back yard – one of my beehives. And the fall of a once great queendom is also allegorical:

One of the dangers for any highly ordered, homogeneous, and efficient hive is vulnerability due to a weakness in the integrity, or strength, of the hive. Bees are extremely hard working, highly ordered, clean, efficient, and engineering geniuses. But they can be subverted and ultimately destroyed by lesser insects who are not hard working, nor ordered, not at all clean or efficient, and have no idea about what it takes to design, run and maintain a sound society (that is also critical to the wellbeing of the entire ecosystem).  

One of these common enemies is the Wax Moth. A foreigner who consumes the products of bee labour and ultimately overtakes and destroys the hive. This invader doesn’t build anything for itself, but rather consumes what others have built, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. Its parasitical lifecycle adds nothing to the strength and development of the bee’s environment in which it feeds.

There are two types of Wax Moth – the Greater, and the Lesser. The Greater Wax Moth is mottled grey and reaches around 5cm in length, is obviously identifiable among the bees, but inexplicably can get into hives undetected. The Lesser Wax Moth is smaller, slimmer, and paler, yet nevertheless just as stealthy and deadly.

These moths get into the hive through unguarded entrances. If there are not enough bees at the entrance or the entrance is too large to guard, these moths will take advantage and sneak in. Making sure there are no gaps, no cracks, no entrances that are too big to be monitored and defended is the ultimate preventative measure. It may not, at the time, seem too much of a big deal – this crack here, that undefended opening there. After all, the moth, especially the lesser moth, may seem completely harmless, right? I mean they are not like wasps or a bear or a human trying to rob the hive!

Once the moth is in the hive, she will lay eggs in cracks or gaps – protected in unassuming places. When the eggs hatch, the larvae start to feed on the beeswax, burrowing under cell caps and leaving sticky web-lined tunnels through the comb. As the larvae burrow through cells in the hive they damage or kill the brood (bee pupae) and ruin the honeycomb. If a bee pupa is not killed by the tunneling, it may be constrained by the moth larvae’s silk tunnel. These trapped bees will uncap themselves, but not be able to leave the comb (a condition called Galleriasis). Moth larvae damage to cells can also cause what’s known as bald brood, where the moth larvae partly remove cell caps in the comb. Attempting to fix the situation worker bees then chew the remainder of the capping, exposing bee pupae heads. This premature exposure of the pupae can cause deformed legs or wings in the newly formed adult bees. The next generation of bees are damaged while the Wax Moth young are nourished.

Such infestation can destroy a weak hive.

A strong hive, however, even when infiltrated by the wax moth, will be able to find and eject the moth larvae before they can cause any damage. The bees know the foreign moth larvae are incompatible to the healthy life of the hive, and as harsh as it seems, the larvae need to be ejected from the hive. Remaining strong is key to a lasting queendom. If the entry to the hive is breached it is not too much of a problem if the hive is strong. A diseased, or weakened hive, for whatever reason, will not have the resources or capacity to deal with such an insidious threat as Wax Moth.

Guard entrances, eject destructive invaders, stay strong. In a bee hive, equity for Wax Moth equates to assured destruction.