2025 May 12 evening
Last year, Beaudin A. Bennett (son of Dr. Robb Bennett, who has identified many of our spiders for us) found a large batch of moth cocoons in an ancient and very dry pile of firewood in the Ten-mile Point area of Saanich. Here is a photograph of a small part of the batch of cocoons – there must surely be more than 100 in all.
Cocoons of Aphomia sociella (Lep.: Pyralidae) Jeremy Tatum
Robb gave the cocoons to me (Jeremy Tatum) to look after over the winter. The first four of the adult moths emerged yesterday, May 11, and another eight are out today by six o’clock in the evening. One is shown below. Thanks to Gregory Pohl for identifying them as Aphomia sociella.
Aphomia sociella (Lep.: Pyralidae) Jeremy Tatum
At first blush this looks like a rather ordinary undistinguished sort of micro moth. First blush is wrong. The life history of the caterpillar is in fact most interesting – it is spent in a bee’s nest, feeding largely upon beeswax, but not averse from eating the occasional ovum, larva or pupa. The Wikipedia article on Aphomia sociella gives a good account of this interesting species.
Here are two more small moths, with more conventional life histories. Both were reared from caterpillars found near Blenkinsop Lake. The first was a green caterpillar feeding on Oemleria cerasiformis. Thanks to Greg Pohl for identifying it as Argyrotaenia franciscana.
Probably Argyrotaenia franciscana (Lep.: Tortricidae)
Jeremy Tatum
The second was from a black and quite wriggly caterpillar feeding on Urtica dioica. I don’t know what it is, but I feel that it must be either in or close to the genus Olethreutes.
Possibly Olethreutes sp. (Lep.: Tortricidae) Jeremy Tatum
Invert Sightings 