Chlorine Dioxide - Wax Worm Lethality

The Goal: Determine if chlorine dioxide gas is able to kill adult wax worms (5th instar) at any concentration.

Since I have plenty of wax worms and chlorine dioxide gas components I thought I'd give this a try. This may lead to an effective way to treat wax worm infected hives in the future.

Ten late instar wax worms were placed into two Tupperware containers (volume of 1.2 Liters). One of the containers was not exposed to the chlorine dioxide gas at all, this will serve as a negative control. Below is a picture of the 10 wax worms in the large container.

10 WW in Tupperware container that will be exposed to ClO2 gas

The other container of wax worms will be exposed to chlorine dioxide gas. Approximately 1.5 grams of Part A and Part B chlorine dioxide reagents was added to the small container seen in the picture below. The idea was to keep the wax worms away from coming into direct contact with the reagents and also allow the reagents to mix together. 

Created a container to mix the ClO2 components that the WW will not be able to com into direct contact with. It is wire mesh and a cover. The wire mesh is taped on the back.

The chlorine dioxide gas reagents were added and the above reagent container was added to the center of the 1.2 Liter Tupperware container. The container was covered with its lid and the edges were wrapped with Parafilm. The control and experimental containers were place at room temperature, protected from the light in the Fisher Lab. It is very important that the containers are protected from the light as it can effect the generation of chlorine dioxide gas.

I am fairly certain that the gas will kill the wax worms due to its lethal effect on smaller organisms and mode of killing. I also added a rather large concentration of reagents, so I will be surprised if it doesn't kill the wax worms. But, just to confirm this hypothesis I will test it out.

//EWW