Pink grub inside nests
Harvesting cocoons from Corn Quicklock trays is fun. You open two pieces of interlocking trays and you see what is inside. Every row tells its own story and often it is a very different from the adjacent nesting tunnel. It is great to see bees at work, but it is very exciting to see what they have produced and to see what other insects are using these nesting tunnels as their home.
This pink larvae has a brown head capsule. It feeds on any detritus and pollen in the tunnel. If left inside over the winter, it can chew through cocoons and destroy your bees. After it has spun its cocoon, it emerges again during the early summer as a moth. I remove these grubs from the nest as I harvest mason bee cocoons.
|Here is the larvae spinning its web for its overwintering period.|