Heather Bell Cornish Honey Bees on the Lizard Peninsula Cornwall

Cornish Art Gallery

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There is a renewed and increasing interest in honey and other honeybee products as natural health foods and super foods.

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The Bee Tiger

This interesting visitor came to one of our beehives in early summer 2007.

It is a Death's Head Hawk Moth ( Acherontia atropos ) regularly recorded as a summer visitor from Europe. Meeting this creature is quite an experience!

To start with, it's size is impressive. The skull marking on the thorax seems inexplicable until the moth is seen at rest on the bark of a tree where it virtually disappears. When disturbed the wings spread to show a startling yellow striped abdomen and hind wings. As if this is not enough the moth makes a loud repetitive squeak, very unexpected from a moth!

Its habit of entering a beehive to steal a feed of honey together with its appearance gives it its alternative and less sinister common name of Bee Tiger. It doesn't much bother the bee and steals little so I am only excited to see them but the bees do not like any intruders in the hive and often the moths are killed by the bees and I have found the corpses.


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Adopt a Cornish Bee Hive and help support the U.K. bee population.

  • You'll receive a newsletter every month full of fascinating facts and pictures explaining what is going on inside your adopted hive over a whole year.
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  • An educational and ethical gift for anybody interested in bees, honey and the natural world in Cornwall.
  • A perfect introduction to the bee hive and beekeeping without the sting!

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