SOME EXPERIMENTS WITH THE LARVA OF THE BEE- 
MOTH, GALLERIA MELLONELLA L 
Joy E. Andrews 
The following is an account of some experiments with the wax- 
worm, or bee-moth. The effects of different degrees of tempera¬ 
ture on the length of the larval life, of light on both larvae and 
imago, and of different kinds of food on the larvae were tried. 
These experiments were carried out in the zoological laboratory of 
the University of Wisconsin. 
As a basis for the work, an account of the moth by F. B. Pad- 
dock of the Texas Experiment Station 1 was used. The life his¬ 
tory of the moth as given by him was made use of, but the habits 
of the moths observed differed somewhat from those noted by 
Paddock. He says that “moths emerge entirely at night”, name¬ 
ly, during the early part of the evening; but in my work it was 
found that while this is usually true, yet emergence does occur 
during the day. Cases of emergence have been noted both in the 
morning and in the afternoon. Consequently a difference was found 
in the mating of the moths, which Paddock says takes place at 
night. Since mating occurs soon after emergence, I have ob¬ 
served moths to mate in the daytime as well as at night. These 
differences may have resulted from the artificial conditions under 
which fhe moths were reared. The constant-temperature rooms 
in which the larvae were kept were heated by electric lights, with 
the result that the rooms were light at all times, although the jars 
containing the moths were shielded from the direct light by pieces 
of paper. 
Another point of difference was in the shape of the egg. Pad- 
dock says that the eggs are elliptical, but I have found them to 
be also spherical and pear-shaped. The shape of the eggs seemed 
to depend largely upon the place where they were laid: they 
1 Paddock, F. B. The life history and control of the bee-moth or wax-worm. 
Investigations Pertaining to Texas Bee-Keeping. 1913. 
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