Small hive beetle
The small hive beetle is a tiny brown or black beetle that sneaks into honeybee hives. It moves in and lives there with the bees. Beekeepers do not like it at all, because it spoils the honey.
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Fun facts
It can smell the warning signal that bees send when danger is near, and it uses it to find their hive.
Bees fight back. They lock the beetles up in little prisons and keep guard over them.
Its grubs make the honey change colour and go bad, and sometimes the bees leave their hive.
One mother beetle can lay 1000 to 2000 eggs in her life.
The grubs crawl out of the hive and turn into beetles under the soil.
Most asked questions about Small hive beetle
?What does the small hive beetle eat?
Honey, pollen, dead bees and bee eggs. Its grubs eat the same food inside the hive.
?How big is the small hive beetle?
It is only about 5 to 7 millimetres long, smaller than a grain of rice.
?Is the small hive beetle dangerous?
Not for people, but it can badly damage beehives and spoil honey.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Aethina tumida
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Nitidulidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Nitidulidae
- Lives on
- Africa, North America, Australia and Oceania, Asia, Europe
Where the facts come from
- Small hive beetle (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by James D. Ellis. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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