Raising Hornworms

[BECHARD4]

Have you tried using artificial leaves? We had really good success a few years ago. It takes all of the work out of keeping plants alive indoors.

The holes in the door. Ouch. Have you seen parasites on the worms yet? Or do you let them bury indoors?

We have not used artificial leaves. Just live plants. I take a new picture tomorrow of the enclosure, the tomatoe plant it up to the top of the cage now.
I have done both, bury inside and outside. I did have worms once this year. I found them in the soft pupae... quite gross.

 

[BECHARD4]

That’s interesting! I have a small pepper plant that had a fair amount of eggs deposited, but they were also all over the cage. I’d prefer a fake plant due to size restraints.

We left the tomatoe plant potted so we can remove it. But you are right, the females lay eggs everywhere.
We did a bigger enclosure to see if they would thrive more.

 

[snitz427]

I have had several new hawk moths emerge this week. In total we have had 6 emerge, but 2 seemed to die very quickly. A 7th may have morphed but not emerged from the dirt.. unsure on that one.

Wondering if anyone else has had immediate deaths of the moths? Their wings appear to have fully formed, they just keeled over.

One thing we did different was place a small dish of sugar water on the bottom vs using a hummingbird feeder the last time. I am not convinced they used the feeder so we left it out this time. Wonder if that is part of my mortality issue...

 

[BECHARD4]

I have had several new hawk moths emerge this week. In total we have had 6 emerge, but 2 seemed to die very quickly. A 7th may have morphed but not emerged from the dirt.. unsure on that one.

Wondering if anyone else has had immediate deaths of the moths? Their wings appear to have fully formed, they just keeled over.

One thing we did different was place a small dish of sugar water on the bottom vs using a hummingbird feeder the last time. I am not convinced they used the feeder so we left it out this time. Wonder if that is part of my mortality issue...

Yes this has happened to us before.
Sometimes our moths last a while and some seem like they only last a couple of days.
Ours are all outside, so I maybe the heat.
We use hummingbird feeder, and have a large tomato plant.
So far this batch we have about 200 eggs and baby horn worms.

 

[JoXie411]

I have had several new hawk moths emerge this week. In total we have had 6 emerge, but 2 seemed to die very quickly. A 7th may have morphed but not emerged from the dirt.. unsure on that one.

Wondering if anyone else has had immediate deaths of the moths? Their wings appear to have fully formed, they just keeled over.

One thing we did different was place a small dish of sugar water on the bottom vs using a hummingbird feeder the last time. I am not convinced they used the feeder so we left it out this time. Wonder if that is part of my mortality issue...

My last few hawk moths did that as well. Only thing that was different was let the soil dry to much

 

[insectovore]

Does anyone have pics of a commercial harnworm breeding facility. I'd love to see how they do it on a mass scale and how they tend to the moth to get more production out of them.

 

[snitz427]

Have 6 months flying around... may get a few more tomorrow or so. I retrieved about 30 eggs this morning, and two of them are laying more tonight. Here is hoping they are fertilized.

I took a short video that shows them laying. I didnt really visualize how they were laying eggs were they were (under sides of small leaves, in cracks, etc). There’s a few things you can see in the vid:

-I put them in a 2x2x3’ screen cage this time so they’d have more room to fly.

-You can see a humming bird feeder with sugar/water mix. I used to hang it up but wanted to try it on the ground (where flowers would often be). Havent seen them use it either location so don’t know how that’s going.

-you can see the substrate bin. I throw large hornworms in it and just leave them. There’s about 3” of soil that I mist now and then. I added mesh to the two ends to help them crawl out to stretch wings. They’re really clumsy during that time.

- I’m using an ornamental pepper plant. Its small and the only nightshade plant I could find at the end of summer.

- you can see the eggs on the leaves. They are the small bright blue balls on the undersides. Sometimes there are a bunch on one leaf... but I only saw that with a bigger plant. Here I get maybe 1-2 per leaf.

Here’s the vid:
Hawkmoths laying eggs

 

[JoXie411]

Have 6 months flying around... may get a few more tomorrow or so. I retrieved about 30 eggs this morning, and two of them are laying more tonight. Here is hoping they are fertilized.

I took a short video that shows them laying. I didnt really visualize how they were laying eggs were they were (under sides of small leaves, in cracks, etc). There’s a few things you can see in the vid:

-I put them in a 2x2x3’ screen cage this time so they’d have more room to fly.

-You can see a humming bird feeder with sugar/water mix. I used to hang it up but wanted to try it on the ground (where flowers would often be). Havent seen them use it either location so don’t know how that’s going.

-you can see the substrate bin. I throw large hornworms in it and just leave them. There’s about 3” of soil that I mist now and then. I added mesh to the two ends to help them crawl out to stretch wings. They’re really clumsy during that time.

- I’m using an ornamental pepper plant. Its small and the only nightshade plant I could find at the end of summer.

- you can see the eggs on the leaves. They are the small bright blue balls on the undersides. Sometimes there are a bunch on one leaf... but I only saw that with a bigger plant. Here I get maybe 1-2 per leaf.

Here’s the vid:
Hawkmoths laying eggs

You know I wish I put as much details into my post that I do my memes.

As always your the women I love reading your entries

 

[snitz427]

Gettin busy...

 

[BECHARD4]

Eggs are coming

 

[snitz427]

Eggs are coming

Oh my lord are they!! First day I had about 30. Today there has to be over 100! We havent started picking them off yet

 

[snitz427]

Oh dear.

 

[snitz427]

Time to pull out the big guns. I brought you into this world, this is the least you can do!

 

[snitz427]

I’d estimate 3-400 eggs, at least, within 2 days. Time to feed the moths off and wait for the next batch of months to emerge (hopefully not this week!)

 

[snitz427]

Eggs hatched 3.5 days after bring laid. Figures... I checked them at dinner time, no hatchlings. Make hornworm chow, grab eggs to transfer - too late!

 

[CamoChameleonsHuman]

Hornworms are the vein of my chameleon keeping existence. They grow too damn fast!

 

[JoXie411]

Idk where else to share this but I’m happy, I found a hawk moth in imeldas laying bin

 

[snitz427]

Well since I forgot about this until you bumped it, seems a good time to update! Hawkmoths have been difficult to dial in. I either get too many eggs or none at all.

My pepper plant has long died, and I’ve tried fake and real plants (but not nightshade family)... the moths dont seem to lay for me without the pepper plant. There’s always the possibility the last two batches were all male, but I’d be surprised if 10 out of 10 were same sex.

Ive fed off the last batch of 5 moths after giving them a few days. Im going to move the moths so that they are closer to my grow lights, so that pepper plants survive.

5 or 6 is the number of moths i shoot for, and even then you can end up with hundreds of eggs. Yikes! Good thing my chams love a good moth.