Waxworms in the wild eat pollen, beeswax, shed bee skins, and cocoons. However, captive waxworms often live off a diet of honey, bran, and grain cereal.

Waxworms are not an end-all solution to plastic waste, however. Wax larvae are pests for bees, naturally feeding off honeycomb and running the risk of reducing their populations ...

Bertocchini and her colleagues found that the worms could break down plastic in a matter of hours—about a hundred waxworms could eat 96 milligrams of plastic in 12 hours, to be precise.

Waxworms are another exciting example. These are the caterpillar larvae of the wax moth and act as destructive parasites in beehives by feeding on the beeswax, much to the disdain of beekeepers.

At first glance there's nothing particularly remarkable about waxworms. The larval form of wax moths, these pale wriggling grubs feed on the wax that bees use to make their honeycomb.

But Bertocchini saw that her waxworms—from a different species called the greater wax moth—were working much faster. When she put them in a polyethylene shopping bag, holes would appear within ...

A study at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada, has found that waxworms, which normally live in beehives and eat wax, also can survive on polyethylene—the kind of plastic used in shopping ...

The waxworms (Galleria mellonella), on the other hand, produce holes in plastic within 40 minutes, and once they get going can produce as many as three holes per hour.

Waxworms, fortunately, aren’t a particularly gross bug, looks-wise. They’re almost cute in a “I’m going to eat you” (no, really, I will eat you) sort of way.