Bug of the Week: Silkworms
It has been cold and rainy here this week, but we still have plenty of insects. You see, they are all indoors.
Here is the story of our silkworms in photographs:
We bought our caterpillars over the Internet. They arrived in a plastic cup. Look at all the colors!
The caterpillars ate a commercial food made up of dried mulberry leaves and thickeners. We bought some extra food from the supplier, because we weren’t sure we could find mulberry leaves. We made it in the microwave by mixing the powder with water and cooking it.
After a few weeks, we did find some mulberry leaves.
The caterpillars ate a lot of mulberry leaves.
The caterpillar makes silk with a gland in its mouth.
When they are ready to pupate, the caterpillars start to make a silk bag around themselves, which is the cocoon. The cocoon is what is used to make the fabric silk.
When we did this before, all the cocoons were white. This time they were white, pale yellow and deep golden yellow. (The colors have to do with the mix of varieties we got.)
After about two weeks (depends on the temperature), the first moths emerged.
This is a male. Isn’t he cute?
The best part of this project has been sharing the caterpillars and the stories with our friends.
For more information about silkworms, see Silkworms: A Thread through History, and also the link at the end of that post.
Related books (Okay, I admit it, I just love to play with this widget):
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Amazing….
A little creepy for me….but still, amazing!
My Wednesday post is all WATER today…the Gulf Water that is. FOUND HERE
Incredible photos, especially the one showing the worm emitting a silk thread. Can you tell me where you got the silk worms, and their food?
Your photos are indeed incredible. How cool that you are raising moths! Do you use the silk, too?
We got the caterpillars and the silkworm chow from Mulberry Farms http://www.mulberryfarms.com/store/, but there are other places. You might want to search for silkworms in your search engine for a local supplier.
As for what we do with them, once the moth has emerged from the cocoon, it is difficult to use the silk because the threads are cut short. We are going to see if we can raise another generation and my son has come up with a sweet craft project that uses the cocoons.
Wow what a fabulous project. My daughter enjoyed your photos. I have to admit I didn’t tell her we could order her own set of silk worms though. Not sure I could deal with that one.
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