Wax Worm Maintenance

From 1-3-15.
From 7-22-14.

Eggs from the two wax worm containers seen on 1-3-15 has since been split into numerous other containers with food in order to increase the size of the colony for future use. Those original two containers have had their eggs transferred for the most part and are both ready to be frozen down to kill any remaining eggs. However, some of the few remaining eggs have recently hatched and are visible in the containers. So, rather than simply freezing the containers, I will perform a crude preliminary experiment on them.

Goal: Determine if the addition of only corn syrup or only honey to the newly hatched wax worms will be enough nutrients to progress them to adulthood.

Two new containers had either ~50 mL of corn syrup or ~50 mL of honey added to the bottoms of them (pictures seen below).

The early instar wax worms along with the debris from the original two containers were transferred to the corn syrup and honey containers (pictures seen below).

The containers were transferred to the 30C walk in incubator with the rest of the colony. None of the earlier transferred eggs appear to have hatched yet and will continued to be monitored. Once a suitable amount of wax worms have hatched and grown they will be used in a LD50 study using P. larvae spores.

//EWW