David Adams wrote:


>  Idk , but there are plenty over wintering in Florida this winter and
> spring , I've already found them in the warehouse getting ready for the
> long hot summer early .
>

Although I truly sympathize Dave,  it is the price you pay for living in a
wonderful climate.

But Christina's question is a good one, for which I do not have an answer,
and some searching on the net did not help.  It was not a really thorough
search, but I will prefer to get the answer to the riddle from someone on
the list.

I got this from an Australian extension document:

"All life-cycle stages of the wax moth, including eggs, are killed by
freezing at the following temperatures and times:

   - - 6.7C at 4.5 hours
   - -12.2C at 3 hours
   - -15.0C at 2 hours. "

This is sort of like the the propolis video.  It is part truths.  I doubt
if ALL the life stages have the same temperature / time lethality to one
tenth of a celsius degree accuracy.  And if they do why do we have lesser
wax months in the freezing north?

Speculation:

It is probably NOT from any contact with the non freezing bee cluster.  Any
stages of the wax month are usually eliminated from that area,  IMHO.

Adults overwintering under bark:  intriguing possibility.  But how warm is
it under bark?  I searched that and found that in the spring roots and sap
transfer heat up under bark, but not in winter and there is not much
metabolism going on in trees with no leaves in winter.  The dulling of my
chain saw blade in frozen wood tells me that it does freeze.

It could be from being in the ground.  Some insects have one stage in the
ground.  Winters with no snow and deep frost in the ground are hard on
them.  But a small proportion must still survive.  I think this is key.
There must be a small proportion of one wax month stage, maybe only a
fraction of a percent, that does not fit the quoted time / temp lethality.

I was once given over a thousand badly infested supers.  It was in spring.
Thinking that our winter had killed the moths I moved them home.  Bad
thinking.  If only a fraction of a percent survived it was enough.

Consider the tardigrade (moss bear,  it is worth googling it, it is the
toughest creature on our planet):

when it enters its protective state to endure a time of dehydration it can:

-survive from almost absolute zero to 300 degrees C (30 minutes I think at
150C)

-survive immersion in salt water, various alcohols and other abnoxious
toxic substances for various times

-survive huge pressures, such as at great ocean depths or the near perfect
vacuum of space.

-survive gamma ray exposures over 1000 times what humans can, in space, and
they survived and reproduced normally after.

They put various species of tardigrades on a space shuttle mission and
stuck them outside in space unprotected for ten days.  Here is the
relationship from this otherwise completely unrelated topic to lesser
waxmoth:  Not ALL of them survived this rather extreme treatment.  But a
percentage did.  In one species of tardigrade, the toughest for that test,
15 percent survived when rehydrated (and reproduced normally).

I hope someone who DOES know which is the toughest wax moth life stage will
post.

Stan

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