Hemaris tityus

Narrow-bordered bee hawk-moth
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Sphingidae
Genus:	Hemaris
Species:	H. tityus
Binomial name
Hemaris tityus (Linnaeus, 1758)[1]
Synonyms
Sphinx tityus Linnaeus, 1758 Sphinx musca Retzius, 1783 Sphinx bombyliformis Linnaeus, 1758 Macroglossa scabiosae Zeller, 1869 Macroglossa knautiae Zeller, 1869 Hemaris tityus reducta Closs, 1917 Hemaris tityus karaugomica Wojtusiak & Niesiolowski, 1946 Hemaris tityus flavescens Cockayne, 1953 Haemorrhagia tityus ferrugineus Stephan, 1924

Hemaris tityus, the narrow-bordered bee hawk-moth, is a moth of the Sphingidae family which is native to the Palearctic.

Range

It has a wide range, from Ireland across temperate Europe to the Ural Mountains, western Siberia, Novosibirsk and the Altai. It is also known from the Tian Shan eastwards across Mongolia to north-eastern China and southwards to Tibet. There is a separate population found from Turkey to northern Iran.

Biology

It appears in May and June and is a lively day-flier (unlike most other sphingids), generally active from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.^[2] It frequents marshy woodland and damp moorland, and has a wide distribution across temperate Europe and Western Asia, but is generally quite scarce. The larvae feed on devil's-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) and field scabious (Knautia arvensis).

Identification

It is distinguished from H. fuciformis by the narrow band of scaling along the outer wing margin, and the forewing's undivided discal cell. It has a wingspan of 40–50 millimetres (1.6–2.0 in). It is one of two similar species of sphingid moth occurring in Britain that closely mimic a bumblebee.

Pictures

• 
  Caterpillar and adult in John Curtis's British Entomology, Volume 5
• 
  Specimen
• 
  Adult feeding

External links

• Hemaris tityus, European Butterflies and Moths
• Description in Richard South The Moths of the British Isles

References