I must admit I hadn't realised that death's head hawkmoths could be such a hive pest. I suppose if there's enough of them they could eat a fair amount, but on the whole I think of them as squatters more than thieves.
I haven't found one actually in a hive recently, but there was one tucked in between a couple of frames on my workbench last weekend. (I had kept these out as examples for our local Wildlife Trust to use in their Big Draw event; drawn honeycomb is always popular with the kids, who enjoy copying the little hexagons. Perhaps the moth was attracted by the honey smell.)
It was a real beauty, with a perfect skull pattern - usually it's more impressionistic than realistic, but this one looked like something out of a graphic novel. I put it outside into sheltered corner. It was surprisingly strong, not biting of course but pushing very firmly with its fuzzy legs. Marvellous creatures.
Btw, the Natural History Museum has some fascinating info about these moths, including some of the ways in which they are thought to survive inside the beehive:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/species-of-the-day/evolution/acherontia-atropos/behaviour/index.html
I had always wondered about the "death's head" pattern. The theory on the above website is that it resembles a worker bee, and, now I come to think about it, this is true, right down to the little "antennae" at the top of the "skull".
