Hemaris tityus

Narrow-bordered bee hawk-moth
Conservation status
	; Least Concern (IUCN 3.1); (Europe regional assessment)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Clade:	Pancrustacea
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Sphingidae
Genus:	Hemaris
Species:	H. tityus
Binomial name
	Hemaris tityus; (Linnaeus, 1758)
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 family Sphingidae 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.^[3] 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.