The wax moth larva or moth is known for having enzymes capable of processing wax. And, as you know, wax is not processed by anything. But recently it was discovered that wax is not the only thing that this larva processes. It can also recycle plastic. This is a real breakthrough in the field of recycling plastic waste...
The large caterpillars of Galleria mellonella can recycle polyethylene, one of the most widely used and most difficult materials to recycle, and therefore especially harmful to the planet's ecology.
Caterpillars. What do we know about them? Someone will say that they are cute - caterpillars turn into butterflies, others will say that these insects need to be disposed of - they can cause a lot of trouble and trouble to gardeners. But it turns out that they can be very, very useful - it is the caterpillars, as it turned out, that can help us improve the ecology of the planet by protecting it from plastic pollution.
Like many great discoveries and inventions, this discovery - in fact, that caterpillars can eat plastic, happened by accident. Biologist Federica Bertocchini from the Spanish Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology in Cantabria, was fond of beekeeping. She used a plastic bag to remove pests in her apiary. And the pests were just the caterpillars of Galleria mellonella, which often attack the hives and eat honey and wax. Bertochini forgot the caterpillars in the bag and after a while was surprised to find that holes appeared in the bag. She contacted colleagues at the University of Cambridge, Paolo Bombelli and Christopher Howe, according to the Washington Post, which quotes the latter as saying: "As soon as we saw the holes, the reaction was immediate: we need to investigate this fact and understand how it happened."
Note that caterpillars are not the first living creatures that have been "suspected" of eating plastic: bacteria and mealworms have recently been found to have an appetite for such treats, but they cannot process plastic as fast as Galleria mellonella! Considering the absolutely insane rate at which the caterpillar is devouring plastic bags, this is very intriguing and reassuring: in America alone we use about 102 billion plastic bags a year, and globally we use a trillion plastic bags every year! At the same time, about 38 percent of plastic is thrown into landfill, where it can decompose for 1000 years or more.
Not surprisingly, the team began investigating the plastic-eating properties of the wax caterpillar. The experiment was simple - the scientists took two identical bags and "offered" for eating the caterpillars Galleria mellonella and the bacteria mentioned above. The first holes in the bag that the caterpillars ate appeared after 40 minutes. And after 12 hours, they reduced the weight of the package by 92 mg, while bacteria can decompose packages in the order of 0.13 mg per day.
“If a single enzyme is responsible for this chemical process, then reproducing it on a large scale using biotechnological methods should be more than feasible,” says Bombelli. "This discovery could be an important tool to help the planet get rid of polyethylene waste accumulated in landfills and in the oceans."
According to scientists, the caterpillar's ability to process plastic may be due to its predilection for eating honeycombs.
"Wax is a polymer, a sort of 'natural plastic', and it has a chemical structure similar to that of polyethylene," says Bertocchini.
“The caterpillars don't just eat plastic without changing its chemical composition. We have shown that polymer chains in polyethylene film are actually broken down by wax worms,” says Bombelli. Worms transformed polyethylene into ethylene glycol. Perhaps there are enzymes in the salivary glands or symbiotic bacteria in the gut of the caterpillar that can do this. The next steps for us will be to try to identify the molecular processes in this reaction and see if we can isolate the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of the plastic."
This means that the problem of plastic can be solved not just by breeding millions of caterpillars in landfills, but by developing a large-scale biotech solution based on the principles of caterpillars eating bags.
“We plan to turn the results of our research into a viable way to rid the planet of plastic waste,” says Bertochini. “This could be a working solution to help save our oceans, rivers and the entire environment from the inevitable effects of plastic accumulation.”
Tons of feathers from poultry farms are disposed of annually. However, thanks to the protein they contain, they can become a valuable food product, according to biotechnologists from Lund University in Sweden. They figured out how to turn waste from poultry farms into a source of useful substances. The method is described in a press release on site university.
“If we continue to deplete the Earth's resources and fill it with garbage in the way we do today, we will need 1.6 planets to survive. But we only have Earth. So we have to find new smart and creative ways to reuse waste,” says Professor Rajni Hatti-Kaul.
Hatti-Kaul found on one of the poultry farms a strain of bacteria that can process the protein contained in feathers (feathers, like hair, nails, scales, beaks and hooves, consist mainly of keratin) into amino acids absorbed by the body. Together with colleagues, she improved the strain, making processing as efficient as possible.
Thus, microorganisms will not only help to cope with excess garbage, but turn it into a useful food product.
“If you get to the amino acids that are formed during the breakdown of proteins, they can be effectively used in animal feed or even human food,” Hatti-Kaul told the Swedish channel. SVT .
“In animal feed, feathers can replace fishmeal and soy protein,” explains researcher Muhammad Ibrahim.
The advantage of this approach is that it does not require the use of any chemicals, which will positively affect both the environment and the cost of the product. From a kilogram of feathers, you can get up to 900 grams of protein.
Microorganisms can process almost any waste from poultry farms and slaughterhouses, including fish scales, but the researchers decided to focus on feathers first.
The process of making food from feathers is extremely simple. They must be placed in a container with saline and bacteria. In order for microorganisms to multiply, a certain temperature and acidity must also be maintained. After some time, the bacteria will turn the contents of the container into a nutrient solution.
So far, the researchers plan to make animal food out of feathers, but in the future, they may also be in our dishes.
“In the future, we will all face a shortage of protein, and there is already a lot of talk about getting it from insects,” explains Hatti-Kaul. “So feathers could be an important source of protein for humans. However, we will start with animal feed.”
Earlier this year, scientists already urged people to pay attention to alternative sources of protein - for example, instead of meat. According to their calculations, products from crickets and flour beetle larvae will not only provide sufficient protein, but also significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to the reduction in agricultural land.
Replacing half of the world's meat consumption would reduce the area of agricultural land by a third.
Soy products, such as tofu, are also great for this purpose, as they require much less land and energy to produce. But synthetic meat is still less profitable in terms of resource costs than, for example, raising chickens - its production requires the same amount of space with high energy costs.
Not everyone will have an appetite for the sight of fried worms and crickets. Specialists from the VTT Technical Research Center in Finland tackled this problem by creating powdered food ingredients from crickets and mealworms. Their structure and taste are quite suitable for making meatballs or falafel.
The dry fractionation method used by VTT makes it possible to produce powders from insects with different tastes and different coarseness of grinding:
if finer, the powder will contain small pieces of chitin and have a pronounced taste of meat, if coarser, the taste will be softer, and the pieces of chitin will be larger.
Fat is removed from insects before processing. Thus, the final product contains up to 80% protein. The powder was tested as a substitute for 5-18% of meatball and falafel ingredients. Even a small addition of insect powder to falafel tripled its protein content.
Insects also help to cope with environmental pollution. This spring, scientists are about caterpillars that can feed on plastic and devour it at an unprecedented rate.
A hundred larvae of the large wax moth, the enemy of European beekeepers, were able to gobble up 92 mg of polyethylene in 12 hours.
The discovery was made by accident. One of the researchers, who is fond of beekeeping, cleaned the hives from moth larvae that feed on wax. She collected the caterpillars in a bag, but they quickly got out of it and crawled around the room. Further analysis revealed that even the cocoons that caterpillars form are able to degrade polyethylene when contracted with it.
The digestion of wax and plastic involves the destruction of the same chemical bonds in the body of insects, the researchers explain. Wax is a polymer whose chemical structure is similar to that of polyethylene.
Everyone knows that even the cartoon character Winnie the Pooh bear sings merrily that even a spoonful of honey is already good. And beekeepers know that not only people are ready to enjoy sweet honey. A real bear can also visit the apiary.
But there are tiny bee lovers who make their way inside and live inside the hive, taking advantage of what the bees create. These inhabitants of the hive include large and small wax moths. Butterflies themselves do not harm, their larvae do harm.
However, what is the nightmare of all beekeepers has incredible beneficial qualities. - sometimes the only remedy that alleviates the course of many diseases and speeds up recovery.
Two types of insects - large and small wax moths or moths are found everywhere where there are apiaries and beekeeping is developed. These insects are united by the desire to get inside the bee dwelling and lay their eggs there. Butterflies themselves are inconspicuous and invisible. The sizes of females of a large wax moth reach 2.0 cm, males up to 1.5 cm, wingspan up to 3.0 cm.
Butterfly wax moth (moth)
The small moth has females 1.2 cm, males 0.9 cm, wingspan up to 2.0 cm.
In addition, the large wax moth has a pattern of spots on its wings. In general, butterflies are greyish-brown and completely inconspicuous. Adult individuals do not have full-fledged oral organs and do not feed on their own, so they themselves cannot harm bee colonies. Adult butterflies live at the expense of stocks that were obtained by feeding on larvae, females - from 5 to 10 days, males - up to 25 days. During this period, they mate and the females have only one goal - to penetrate the hive. After waiting for the dark time of the day, when the activity of the bees falls, they penetrate inside the hive to lay their eggs there. Inside a large moth there can be up to 2000, inside a small one - up to 400.
The development of larvae in the egg takes about 7-8 days, after which a caterpillar appears from them. Its length is not more than one mm, in the first hours of life it does not move. After that, with the help of three pairs of small legs, active movement and feeding of the larva begins. Gnawing through the passages in the combs, the caterpillar of a large moth feeds on wax with the remains of honey and bee brood. The larva is protected from bees by silky threads that follow it as it moves. Moving inside the honeycombs, the larvae of a large wax moth damage their important part, which is called the mediastinum.
wax moth larva
Before pupation, the body length of the caterpillar of a large moth reaches up to 2.0 cm, a small one - 1.0 cm. Approximately 25 days after the start of feeding, the pupa stage begins. And after another 10 days, a butterfly appears, which quietly gets out of the evidence with the sole purpose of finding a male, mating with him, and everything repeats.
Under favorable conditions, the full development cycle is 45 days. The small wax moth consumes less wax, but more of its own excrement and other residues at the bottom of the hive. It does not damage the mediastinum. From the point of view of the content of biologically active substances, the larva of the small moth is of no interest. It is the tincture of large moth larvae that has certain beneficial properties.
How and when will wax moth tincture help?
Only preparations from the larvae of a large wax moth will facilitate the course of the disease, they can be used for:
- various diseases of the respiratory system;
- gynecological disorders, including infertility;
- consequences of strokes and heart attacks;
- various oncologies, including prostate adenoma;
- headaches;
- decreased immunity;
- depressive manifestations.
It is also allowed to drink tincture for prophylactic purposes during the epidemic of colds and flu, to regulate blood glucose levels, to maintain blood vessels in good condition.
Unfortunately, you should not wait for the doctor to prescribe the wax moth tincture. This remedy has not yet been recognized by official medicine.
However, reviews of patients suffering from tuberculosis speak of a complete cure for the disease if wax moth tincture was used as part of complex therapy. For personal use, you can independently prepare a tincture of larvae.
Preparation of tincture from the larvae of a large moth at home
For home cooking, you need to find and buy the larvae themselves, it is important that they are about 1.0 - 1.5 cm in length and the penultimate age before pupation, in this state they actively feed and the enzyme content is very high. Given that pupation begins at about 25 days, it is optimal to harvest larvae at the age of 20-21 days. You can buy them from beekeepers. Beekeepers sell them, as a rule, alive.
You will also need alcohol diluted to 40% or vodka. To prepare a 10% tincture per 10 g of larvae, you need to take 100 ml of alcohol, and for a more saturated version, you need 20 g of raw materials per 100 ml of alcohol.
Important! Taking a solution of alcohol stronger than 40% for homemade wax moth tincture is not recommended, as this can negatively affect the protein bases of enzymes.
The larvae need to be poured with alcohol and put the dishes with them to infuse for two to three months. After that, the tincture can be consumed without filtering, if aesthetic feelings do not suffer from the appearance of larvae at the bottom of the container.
When considering the question of how to take the tincture, you should know that it is not taken in its pure form, as a rule, it is diluted with water or milk by 8-10 times.
If you plan to take medicine for oncology, tuberculosis and other serious diseases, then a positive effect can only be expected from the drug, in the manufacture of which only large moth larvae were used. Dosage in the treatment of cancer in adults depends on the weight of the patient, for every ten kg use 5 to 10 drops of 10% tincture or 2.5 to 5 drops of 20% tincture. When it comes to the treatment of children, the amount of the drug depends on age. For each year of life from one to 14 years, 1 - 2 drops per year, that is, the number of drops per reception corresponds to the number of full years. Tincture of moth larvae does not cancel medical treatment and surgical interventions for oncological tumors.
Important! At least 6 - 7 species of insects live in bee hives, whose larvae are similar to the larvae of a large moth. Only an experienced beekeeper or specialist entomologist can distinguish them.
In order to avoid deception from unscrupulous sellers, you can use products from trusted manufacturers and buy tincture from reliable sellers.
How to buy a tincture of moth larvae
Due to the fact that medicines from moth larvae are not officially recognized, it is unlikely that you will be able to buy them in a regular pharmacy, unless there is a department of dietary supplements and natural medicines. An amateur beekeeper can get a small amount of larvae for personal needs, but given that the demand for tincture is growing every day, even hundreds of beekeepers are unlikely to solve the problem of providing tincture to everyone.
Demand creates supply, and many have learned to grow larvae almost on an industrial scale on a nutrient medium that has nothing to do with wax, bees, or honey, so there is little benefit from such raw materials.
It is preferable to buy those preparations that are prepared from larvae, 
grown in conditions as close to natural as possible. It must certainly be a beehive and honeycombs, with the remains of honey and bee bread. Honeycombs are installed at intervals of 3 mm. The best time is the end of spring and summer. After 7 - 8 days after installation, the evidence is examined and as soon as the larvae reach the desired size, they are shaken out and collected.
Considering all the technology, it becomes clear that the price of a tincture of fireworm larvae cannot be 20-30 rubles. Most often, prices start at a few hundred rubles for a bottle of tincture.
It is faster and more convenient to make a purchase through online platforms. When choosing a medicine, do not hesitate to look at customer reviews and those documents that are posted on the site where the tincture is sold. If you have any questions, then ask them to the consultants who are always in the online pharmacy and are ready to answer you.
Like any medicine, wax moth tincture has contraindications. The main of them are allergic reactions, individual intolerance, pregnancy, lactation period. Reception should also be stopped if after it the state of health worsens.
A large wax moth is a small butterfly that does great harm to both the bees themselves and the whole beekeeping. Wax moth control is difficult, but essential. The attitude towards this butterfly is contradictory. Some owners of apiaries mercilessly fight this scourge, while others, on the contrary, breed this butterfly, or rather its caterpillars.
Butterfly and bee moth caterpillar
Such a paradox is explained simply: wax moth, or moth, eating products created by bees, absorbs all their benefits. As a result, the fire becomes healing. It is harvested, an alcohol tincture is made from it, which is used for many diseases. However, in order to create such a medicine, you need to give a whole hive to be eaten by the caterpillars of this moth. Only large farms can afford this. In general, beekeeping suffers greatly from the activity of the caterpillars of this butterfly.
Types and signs of wax moth
Wax moth has many names. This is a butterfly from the moth family, which includes a large number of other butterflies, but the wax moth, nevertheless, is called that - the moth. She is also called shashel and moth.
What is a moth in a wardrobe, everyone knows. A moth in a bee hive or a wax store is even worse. Food is not stored in the wardrobe, so moths can be dealt with in quite radical ways.
The wax moth lives in food among very useful insects. Fighting this butterfly and its caterpillars, you can harm the bees themselves and their products.
On the waste products of bees, two types develop: large and small wax moth. Both types of butterflies settle in the hives, eating:
- wax;
- bee bread;
- pollen;
- propolis;
- royal jelly;
- cocoons;
- honeycombs.
The great wax moth lives up to its name because it is considerably larger than its related species. A small wax moth in a wingspan reaches 24 mm, a large one - 35 mm. There are some differences in the color of the wings of these butterflies. However, there is no difference in the impact on the bee family - both species destroy both cultivated and wild bees with equal efficiency.
They do not touch the owners of the hive, but after a while they are unable to feed their families and a huge number of caterpillars die of starvation.
The bees are trying to fight the scourge, but not all families can cope with it. The fact is that the bee is a daytime insect, and the wax moth is nocturnal. While the striped workers are making honey and other sweet foods, the caterpillars and butterflies sleep and do not show themselves in any way. At night, when the bees need to sleep, the caterpillars go out to robbery.
Life cycle and fertility
The butterfly itself does not feed, it does not even have developed digestive organs. Its function is to find a member of the opposite sex, mate and lay eggs in a new hive. Nature has given her no more than 2-3 weeks for this function.
The female butterfly lays her eggs at dusk away from honey and other tasty and useful things: on the floor, in the cracks and gaps of the hive. This is done so that the bees do not notice the eggs ahead of time. At one time, this little creature lays up to 300 eggs. In her entire life, she can make five such clutches.
Moth caterpillars are born after about 10 days. Their size is about 1 mm. The larvae have a color similar to their food, white with a slight yellowish tinge. However, soon they grow up to 3-5 cm, acquiring a dark gray color.
On such rich food, the caterpillars pupate within a month, attaching a cocoon to the walls of the hive. After 10 days, a young butterfly flies out of the cocoon, starting a new life cycle of its species. During the warm period of the year, three generations of these moths can be replaced.
Popular measures of struggle
How to get rid of wax moth without resorting to drastic measures? After all, insecticides kill any insects, including bees. Since ancient times, beekeepers from moths have used the following methods of struggle.
Thermal treatment of hives. It is not the hive with the bees living there that is exposed to temperature, but mainly the frames in which moth larvae can live. In this regard, the fight against clothes moth is no different from the fight against wax moth. Only in one case, fur coats and hats are taken out into the cold, and in the other - wax with frames.
At temperatures below 10ºС frost, the wax moth, which is at any stage of the life cycle, does not withstand more than two hours and dies.
apiary in winter
However, it is often impossible to wait for winter, since the activity of caterpillars is so high that the hive may not survive until winter. In this case, you can get rid of the moth with the help of steam, the wax moth does not withstand dryness and high temperatures. When processing the frames with hot steam above +50ºС, all moths at any stage of the life cycle die.
The use of saline solutions. If heat treatment fails or is not possible, salt treatment can be applied. Insects are usually very sensitive to substances with a strong PH deviation from neutral values. The wax moth is no exception to the rule. Fighting its eggs, larvae and adults with salt often brings more significant results than steaming. Just steam creates short-term dryness, and salt remains for a long time.
How to deal with wax moth using salt? To do this, pour a concentrated salt solution into the sprayer. Then honeycombs cleaned of honey are taken and carefully sprayed from all sides. After that, you need to dry the salted honeycombs and put them away for storage. This method will keep the cells safe until spring.
Before the start of the honey harvesting season, these combs are sprinkled with water and placed in the hive. So the moth does not start and the bees no longer need to give salt.
However, the salt-treated material is rapidly degraded, so this method is only suitable if the composition of the frames is not susceptible to corrosion, that is, it is made of stainless steel or chromium.
What to do if the use of salt is undesirable, and the wax moth has actively begun to infect the honeycomb? In this case, vinegar is used.
The affected area of the honeycombs is treated with 80% acetic acid at a dosage of 200 ml per 1 sq.m of surface. In a hive free from bees, combs that need to be processed are placed, covered with a soft cloth soaked in vinegar. After that, the hive is closed and wrapped with a film, leaving no gaps. Vapors of vinegar flow down the frames, killing all pests. If you want the wax moth to be completely destroyed, the fight with vinegar should last at least three days at a temperature of 16 to 18 ° C. After this procedure, the hive must be well ventilated. For greater certainty, this treatment should be repeated after two weeks.
Use of scented herbs. From our own experience of dealing with domestic moths, we know that this insect is afraid of pungent odors. This is why all moth repellents smell so strong.
Immortelle is often used in the fight against wax moth. The dried grass of this plant is crushed into dust, sprinkled with honeycomb frames. In this form, they are placed in a house for storage.
In addition to the immortelle, the moth is afraid of the smells of nuts, any mint, oregano, hops, wormwood, citrus fruits, elderberry, garlic.
When you can't do without chemistry
The modern chemical and pharmacological industries have actively responded to the misfortune of beekeepers, offering them a wide range of means to combat the wax moth. The following are currently recommended.
Sulfur fumigation. Arrange compact hives filled with combs indoors. Using a smoker with a long tube soldered into the smoke outlet, spray 50-70 g of sulfur per 1 m3 of the volume of the houses into the holes of the hive. The action of sulfur is aimed at eliminating caterpillars, sulfur does not act on eggs, so fumigation must be done several times as the larvae emerge.
The fumigated hive must be kept for 25-30 hours under the influence of sulfur dioxide. After that, it is taken out to fresh air for ventilation.
Entobacterin. This drug in certain concentrations is not dangerous for bees, humans, birds and mammals, which is why it is so popular among beekeepers. It is available in the form of powder, concentrated suspension and paste. The name of this remedy comes from its action. 1 g of powder contains 30 billion thuringieiisis spores, as well as a protein that is toxic to these butterflies.
Okebm gas mixture. Standard packaging is designed for processing a cubic meter in sealed chambers, under temperature conditions from +14 to +16ºС for 10-12 hours. Work must be carried out in gas masks.
Some desperate or lazy beekeepers use formalin in the fight against moths. This substance is part of the chemical warfare mixtures that have been used since the First World War. This, of course, is a strong and effective remedy, but is it worth it to process honeycombs, which are designed to produce very useful food raw materials.
Prevention is the best way to protect
How to protect hives from wax moth infestation? This question is extremely relevant, because, whatever the control, it is not always possible to keep track of this butterfly, and beekeeping suffers large losses from it.
Preventive measures can be reduced to the following actions.
- Try to breed healthy bee colonies. Such bees themselves defend their cellular world well. They periodically audit their home. Having found the caterpillars, they eat them, and the pupae are sealed with propolis. Special bees guarding the hive catch the butterflies and throw them out into the street. In a weakened bee colony, all these actions are either not carried out at all, or are carried out inefficiently.
- Beekeeping is not only about helping bees collect honey and selling this product, it is also about constantly taking care of the cleanliness of hives and honeycombs. Regular inspection of combs allows you to detect pests at an early stage, when they can still be quickly destroyed.
- Hives need to be constantly cleaned and repaired. Bee houses should be closed as much as possible. Then the pests will not be able to get inside and lay eggs there.
- Bees should be able to freely access any corner of the house. So they will be able to conduct an independent fight against the moth.
- Cells need to be constantly updated. On average, about 35% of honeycomb frames are replaced annually.
- Between the hives it is recommended to create grooves filled with water. This prevents the movement of moth larvae from one hive to another.
- Wax sent for storage must be kept in well-closed vessels. Wax from the apiary must be quickly taken away, sending it for sale or processing. Spare combs should be kept cool, dry, clean and ventilated.
Beekeeping is a troublesome business, but a rewarding one. Everything that bees do is useful. Honey itself, plant resin, their pollen in a processed and pure form, wax, honeycomb caps, bee milk, bee venom, the bodies of dead bees themselves, and finally, the worst pests of bees - moths, are themselves medicine.
So if you missed the settling of the wax moth in the hive, do not be discouraged. Collect the larvae and alcohol them properly. It will turn out to be an excellent medicine that helps with many diseases. Alcoholized larvae are especially useful in the fight against tuberculosis and bronchopulmonary diseases.
So develop beekeeping - it is profitable and always useful.
A butterfly called the large wax moth (Galleria mellonella) is notorious among beekeepers: its caterpillars live in bee hives, feed on honey, bee bread and wax, literally eating honeycombs and at the same time damaging bee brood.
But wax moths also have an extremely useful property: researchers from Cambridge and the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria found that G. mellonella caterpillars eat plastic bags. It turned out by chance: Federica Bertocchini, one of the co-authors of an article in Current Biology, cleaned her hives from moth caterpillars, putting them in a plastic bag - and after a while the whole bag was literally riddled with holes. No one but the caterpillars could do them.
Then they were already specially planted on polyethylene material in order to understand how hard they destroy it. The result exceeded all expectations: one hundred caterpillars of a large wax moth destroyed 92 mg of polyethylene in 12 hours. According to the authors of the work, insects work in this sense even more efficiently than special bacteria that can destroy plastics.
Breaking down polyethylene, G. mellonella caterpillars turn it into ethylene glycol - a colorless and odorless substance, sweetish in taste and poisonous; however, the caterpillars, apparently, did not suffer from it in any way. It is curious that not only the caterpillars destroyed the polyethylene: the chrysalis, which simply lay on the polyethylene, soon made a hole in it; apparently, the decomposing enzyme was simply escaping through her integuments. An experiment with pupae, by the way, showed that insects really break down polyethylene, and not just gnaw holes in it. The chemical structure of polyethylene is similar to that of beeswaxes, so one would probably expect that wax moth larvae feeding on the wax in the hives would be able to overcome this artificial polymer as well.
The challenge now for researchers is to understand what enzyme—or set of enzymes—allows G. mellonella caterpillars and pupae to break down polyethylene, and what exactly is happening there chemically. It is possible that insects themselves synthesize the necessary enzymes, but it is possible that some symbiotic gastrointestinal bacteria help them to break down polymers. Here it is worth recalling that polyethylene, in which everything and everything is now packed, in Europe makes up 40% of all plastics, and 38% of all plastic that can be found in landfills. It is unusually stable, decomposes for a very long time (different types of polyethylene decompose naturally over a period of one hundred to four hundred years), so it is clear why a huge mass of polyethylene is a serious environmental problem. And it is possible that this problem can be solved just with the help of a large wax moth.
