ORDER IV.—MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES. 181 
Truly a worm may teach us many things! ’Tis a little 
index, but, like the needle to the pole, it points to the hand 
Divine ! 
The Bee-moth (Galleria cereana). 
The Bee-moth is another wonderful little insect, capable 
of doing much injury, and possessing curious developments 
of instinct. It seems scarcely possible that a large army of 
bees, defended by deadly stings such as they possess, should 
allow a few small soft-bodied and unarmed caterpillars to 
enter and destroy their fortified castles. Yet this is the case. 
Notwithstanding their weakness, and entire lack of means 
to defend themselves, the larve of the bee-moth will enter 
and so corrode the honey-combs as to force the bees to aban- 
don tHeir hive. 
More than two thousand years ago these moths were 
mentioned by Aristotle, who says of them: They fly in the 
night toward a light, and are very fond of eating beeswax, 
for which purpose they go to the bee-hives and there de- 
posit their excrements, out of which proceed little worms. 
Colomela also declares them to be the most terrible ene- 
mies to bees. 
The caterpillar of the bee-moth has sixteen feet. Its 
body is yellowish-white, its head brown, and its length, 
when fully grown, a little more than an inch. It feeds 
upon the beeswax, and their tiny insect stomachs will di- 
gest what a learned chemist could not analyze. Their life 
is one of continual exposure to the greatest danger, for woe 
to the individual that is caught by a bee. They seem to 
know, however, that they subsist at the expense of a power- 
ful and warlike population who admit no strangers within 
their republican domain; and as their tender, unprotected 
skins would be constantly exposed to the fatally-venomous 
stings of the enraged bees, Nature has taught them to dig a 
mine in the wax, and thus supply themselves with both 
