Of the original 100 and some, I ended up with 4 survivors. I lost close to 80 of them in 1 24 hour period when disease swept through all the containers. After that I had about 10 left. In the final stages here, it has been hard to keep them alive. On Monday, one of them spun a cocoon and 2 more are definitely ready to do so going by their size. The other remaining one is substantially smaller, so probably will continue to feed for a while yet.
Here you can see a newly emerged 3rd instar with it’s shuck still attached to the leaf beside it. At this point the new skin is very soft and so I notice that they tend to sit and ‘rest’ or whatever for a while after molting before going on to feed again.
The Cecropias are doing quite well. However I did lose one container of them to some sort of disease. The whole container of them got sick and died within 24 hours. The other 3 containers of them are doing well. They eat about 4 large Maple leaves a day now … and will only consume more as they get larger. Their colour seems to change from light green to almost black, but I’m not sure what causes this or why. My informal count this morning came to just over 70 left, so there has been some mortality other than the container that had the disease. Most of them are just over 1 inch long now.
So far, out of approximately 150 eggs, I have 118 Cecropia larvae. I started them on Maple as it is common here and abundant, so I should have a good food source for the most of the summer. I'm currently housing them all in clear SnapLid containers. However, there is no way that I will be able to raise all these in such limited space. So, when they begin to outgrow the containers, I will set most of them free on local Maples, keeping only the most robust ones.
The hatch has begun. Last night when I went to bed, there was 1, this morning when I got up there were a couple of dozen. I've started them on Maple leaves – looks like there is going to be a LOT of them!
After 8 days, Mrs. Cecropia has laid 154 eggs … and now, like all overworked mothers, she is spent. She will likely goto moth heaven tonight.
I've put the eggs into a clear plastic container and we will see how many hatch. I will try to raise them on maple if I can.
Here is my lights set up at my Mother-in-laws place in the country outside of Smiths Falls, Ontario. I set up and collected Friday and Saturday nights – May 28 and 29, 2010. There were a lot of different Sphingids coming in both nights, with a nice hatch of Two-eyed Sphinx on Saturday night. I did not see any Silk Moths on Friday night, but on Sat., first a really beat up Polyphemus came in and then about 5 mins later a beautiful, female Cecropia came in. I kept here alive and she is in a paper bag right now – she should lay between 100 and 200 eggs overnight, then die. I will try to raise those eggs, but it might be hard on the boat.
Ready for the night to come.
Couple of young potential collectors … with ice cream for bait.
Set up at night.
Waved Sphinx (Ceratomia undulosa) Bunch of these came in on Friday night.
It’s not often that I’m home alone … no kids that is, and have a chance to work on my bug collection. But for the next couple of days, with the kids at grandmas, the kitchen table is mine! I left some bugs unprotected over the past winter and they got all dusty. I’m finding that the dust does not just brush or blow off, so I’m trying to work out a solution to clean them with. Isopropal alcohol is not working very well. I hesitate to use actitone as it may leach out some of the colours. Any other ideas?
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