I'm back! sorry I haven't been posting for the last 6 months. In march I'm going to get some new caterpillars. I ordered cecropia, polyphemus, luna, and promethea eggs. I will raise them in pie 0r cake tins. I"m going to put 12 caterpillar eggs in each. (which is just an excuse to have 4 cakes!).
In the picture this is a cecropia caterpillar in its 5th instar. (the last, not counting the pupal shed). This is not my hand - I got this image from
wormspit.com. I ordered my eggs from
www3.islandtelecom.com
this is a cecropia caterpillar. As you can see, it's not in its last instar. It's a hatchling. I got this from Bill Oehlke as an egg. He sent me about 20 eggs. I had refrigerated it (I wouldn't recommend this because if you forget a lot of stuff like me you could leave it in the refrigerator too long. If you wish to refrigerate, only do it for a week at most. I refrigerated it because the leaves weren't ready and I needed to wait a little longer). After I took them out of the refrigerator it took 9 days to hatch. This hatchling is 3 days old. It's starting to make frass (poop) - the two little black things below it. In the lower right, you can see that there are some bite marks on the leaf. This is a common lilac leaf. I have one in my backyard. The hatchlings are successfully eating. these eggs are considered large compared to other ones.
