Behaviour of the Mediterranean flour month Anagasta kuehniella (Zeller) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) in different types of pollen

Abstract

Anagasta kuehniella has come to constitute an important plague of the pollen stored in the IX Región, causing economical loss to the beekeepers. Considering the total ignorance of their behavior in the región especially in this kind of food, I am proposing the need of knowing the preference of the insect for some type of pollen, also, to determine the presence of other species of insects wich may be infesting the pollen. For that purpose breedings of A. kueniella were kept in pollen collected from the beehives. In the preference of the insect it was used forn types of pollen sorted by color, belonging to the Taraxacum officinale, Trifolium pratense, Brassica napus and Cirsium sp species. The results show that A. kuehniella prefered to lay on the pollens wich belong to T. officinale, T. pratense and B. napus, despesing the Cirsium sp pollen, being the growth and development of their different stages similar in all of then. Besides the presence of A. kuehniella, Plodia interpunctella was detected infesting stored pollen.