Showing posts with label Insects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Insects. Show all posts

Thursday, 1 December 2011

Day Twenty Two, Week 4

Today is the first day of summer in the southern hemisphere.  It feel more like autumn than summer though.  At the moment the outdoor temperature is 13.5 oC. Hardly summer temperature.
Indoors though it's 20.8 oC.
Despite the cooler weather the moulting continues. 
The largest of the silkworms is now 3cm long. 
Mr Honey Pie has been doing some house painting indoors.   We have been trying to redecorate since July.  Painting only gets done when Mr Honey Pie gets consecutive days off from his roster, or when he has consecutive late starting shifts.  As well as that, it's necessary that he has no previous appointments on those days.  Finally, he was able to paint the main bathroom and the smallest room in the house.
We had to take the silkworm containers and their contents into the garage while the painting was going on.
Silkworm larvae are sensitive to various fumes.
Things like essential oils can kill the larvae.
After all, they are an insect.  Lavender essential oil is an insect repellent so lavender oil and silkworms just don't mix.
So to be on the safe side, out went the silkworms into a fume free zone.

Monday, 21 November 2011

Day Twelve

Sericulture is the cultivation of silkworms for silk.
Myths and legends surround the origins of silk.
The story I like most is how almost five thousand years ago, the Chinese Emperor asked his wife to find out what was eating his mulberry trees.
On the trees, the emperor's wife, Hsi-Ling-Shi, found white grubs eating away at the leaves.  She thought that she could destroy the insects by dropping the cocoons into boiling water.
What she found  was that the hot water dissolved enough of the 'glue' holding the cocoon together to reveal a continuous thread that she was eventually able to spin to make thread thick enough to weave cloth.
Hsi-Ling-Shi persuaded her husband, Emperor Huang-Ti to grow a grove of mulberry trees for her so that she could cultivate enough cocoons to weave more silk cloth.
This is how Hsi-Ling-Shi became the very first sericulturalist.
Silk production was to remain a guarded secret by the Chinese for three thousand years.
Today, silkworms cannot survive in the wild and are fully domesticated.
The silkworm moth cannot fly and would fall easily fall prey to predators.

Emperor Huang-Ti (Yellow Emperor)

Sunday, 13 November 2011

Day Four

Phew, what a day!
Thought I'd not get around to this post today, even though photos were taken early morning.  Birthday celebrations with family followed by a trip to the emergency room at ANZAC Memorial Hospital Katoomba kept me busy.
Not to worry though, everything's good. Just need to make an appointment to see my dentist is all.
Today's emergents. 
Length: less than 3mm
Thickness: less than 1mm.

Most of the eggs are now pale in colour, that is, empty.

Three little silkworms, reaching for that elusive mulberry leaf.

Silkworms are insects.
The caterpillars have six 'real' legs and five pairs of false legs.