This year's first generation reached the stage at which they needed the most feeding and cleaning last week. And then the leaves of the trees from which I picked their leaves got mysteriously contaminated with something that kills caterpillars (I'm almost certain that was Bacillus thuringiensis, judging from the symptoms, but I'd better spare you ( Read more... )

I was lucky that the scaffolding for this cocoon (or any other cocoon) wasn't attached to the lid of the box, so these shots are the best I've ever managed of a caterpillar still visible through the silk mesh while spinning its cocoon.

The photos are from 17 July, and I finally got around to posting them. :P

( Click if you can stand the sight of caterpillars :P )

Chasing around the room a spider that was afraid of me while was afraid of it because I didn't want it to get some of my pet silkworms. :D

I did manage to get it onto a piece of paper and throw it out of the window. I hope it landed safely.

This year's silkworms hatched too early because of the crazily warm mid-March weather. Thankfully, the mulberry trees started leafing out too early too, so I could feed the hatchlings on the very first leaves last Sunday night ( Read more... )

This pair of silkworm moths are holding onto the remnants of the silk "scaffolding" of a cocoon on the lid of their clear plastic container. :D

I don't know if the eggs in the photo are theirs, or of the other pair that bred the same box.


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Hello world, I'm still alive. :P ( Read more... )

Wow, I'm fast - I took the first three photos on 8 May, and I'm posting them now. LOL

These silkworms were all at their last larval stage (the 5th instar), but the one in the middle had only changed its skin two days before, and the other two were near spinning. I chose one of the whitest and one of the most coloured ones for this photo, and the ( Read more... )

Well, not all of them. Most of the ones that were still changing their skins were in a separate box.

So here is a bunch of mostly third instars, which means that they've already changed their skins twice (they hatched on 6 April). I only took them out of their box for the photo. I'll separate them into more boxes soon because they are growing fast ( Read more... )

The moth that used to be this caterpillar finally came out of the cocoon yesterday. A female, as I expected with such a big caterpillar.

Wow, she's huge! Of course I had to name her Mothra! *waves at dan4behr and maxauburn*

Flash photos from my sister's camera because it was a cloudy day:

Centimeters:

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This is what I got on Monday: only females came out of the cocoons that day. I had only one "bachelor" male left, so I had to find them some males that had already separated from their previous mates, and two of the ladies had to wait for several hours (one even ended up with a "third-hand" male because I had already had the same kind of incident ( Read more... )