Small hive beetle and wax moths: the comb scavengers

Two pests that eat the comb

Both pests do their damage as larvae, both destroy comb, and both can ruin stored honey. The resemblance ends there. The small hive beetle is a primary threat that infests colonies of every size, moves long distances with people, and is notifiable in the UK. Wax moths are found wherever bees are kept, live largely on comb that bees are not defending, and are dealt with by keeping colonies strong and stored comb protected rather than by reporting them.

The beetle

Aethina tumida is native to sub-Saharan Africa, where it lives in honey bee colonies as a minor scavenger. Outside Africa it is a pest. Adults and larvae feed on brood, honey and pollen; where the larvae feed, the stored honey ferments and the comb is destroyed; heavily infested colonies can collapse structurally or abscond. WOAH notes that it infests colonies of all strengths and sizes, does worst in warm and humid conditions, and can reproduce at low levels without visible damage, hidden in debris or under hive inserts.

The soil stage matters. Wandering larvae leave the hive to pupate in the ground, and the time from egg to adult — three to twelve weeks — depends on humidity, temperature and food. A beetle needs soil it can pupate in, which is part of why its impact varies so much from place to place.

Adult beetles do relatively little damage themselves, though their presence can drive a colony to abscond. What they do is multiply. Adults can live up to a year, more than a thousand can occur in one colony, and a female can lay about a thousand eggs in her life, in clutches tucked into cracks or inside capped brood cells; eggs hatch in one to six days, and fewer hatch when the air is dry. A colony can therefore go from a few beetles to a damaging larval population within one generation.

Where it has been found, with dates

WOAH's diagnostic chapter, in its 2018 edition, records the beetle in the United States from 1996 and since then in Canada, Central and South America, Australia, Egypt, Italy, Korea and the Philippines. That is a list of where it had been reported by 2018, not a current map. The table gives the dated position where HoneyHQ has read the official source, including the United Kingdom.

Two things in the table are easy to misread. The Lazio find in June 2026 was in hives moved illegally about 300 kilometres from Calabria, carrying beetles genetically identical to the 2014 isolate — a human step, not natural spread. And the UK row is a surveillance result: guidance last updated on 21 August 2024 says the beetle is 'not thought to be present' in the UK, and sentinel apiaries and import rules are how that is kept true. Not detected is not the same as absent.

What the beetle does to honey

Among the bee pests this site describes, the small hive beetle has the most direct effect on honey. Larval feeding goes with fermentation of stored honey, leaving it frothy and smelling fermented, and slime trails over comb and frames. WOAH warns that honey-extracting rooms are at risk, because stored comb, honey and wax cappings in a warm room are good places for the beetle to feed and breed.

Wax moths: opportunists

The greater wax moth, Galleria mellonella, and the lesser wax moth, Achroia grisella, lay their eggs in hives and stored comb, and their larvae tunnel through the comb to the midrib, spinning silk as they go. A strong colony keeps them in check; comb stored without bees and comb in weak colonies is where they thrive. A review of the greater wax moth describes severe damage in the tropics and subtropics and webbing that can drive a colony to abscond. It gives no figure for the honey lost, and HoneyHQ does not supply one.

Wax moth larvae are also one cause of bald brood: tunnelling under the cappings, they leave lines of pupae uncapped across a frame, the pupae plump and healthy. Finding wax moth in a living colony is usually a reason to ask why the colony could not defend its comb.

Beetle or moth?

Reporting and moving bees

In every UK nation the small hive beetle is a notifiable pest, with the same duty as for foulbrood: report a suspicion immediately and move nothing until the authority approves. Outside the UK, the national bee-health authority sets the rule. Every long-distance step the beetle has taken in Europe was taken by people moving bees, comb or equipment, which is why the rules that matter are about movement as much as about bees.

Where the beetle has not been found, the WOAH standard recommends watching sentinel apiaries in the zones most at risk of an introduction, to find an infestation early enough to eradicate it. Because low-level reproduction can be hidden in debris and under hive inserts, a clean inspection is not proof of absence, and a suspect beetle or larva goes to the authority to be identified by its shape under a stereomicroscope and by PCR. The table sets out how each of the other watched threats is looked for, and what a negative result means.