No problem, it's not a secret

In summary, I bought medium hornworms, I made them eat until they wanted to pupea and during that time I put a light on 14h a day (The light is to prevent the diapause to be for 4-5 months! If the hornworms think it's summer, they will form a pupea and emerge as a moth 4-5 weeks later...and if they feel it's going to be winter because there is not enough light, they will form a pupea and emerge only months after).

After eating a lot, they start wandering to form a pupea. I put some worms in a box with aspen bedding, others in a box with coconut bark and some others in a box with toilet paper rolls. I tried these techniques to see wich one works best. I found that the three are good to make them form a pupea.

After, I waited for 5 weeks. My boyfriend built me a big screened cage (3 x 2 x 2 feets) and I put the pupea in the bottom of the cage. The moths need space to fly, mate and lay eggs. I put a an ornemental pepper plant (capsicum annuum) in the cage for the moths to lay eggs on. It also works with a tomato plant, but at this time of the year, I couln't find one.

I also put some branch to allow the moths to climb and unfold their wings.
When the moths did emerge, the males find females, they mate, and the females lay eggs under the plant leaves. I also provided them a sweet solution to drink. The moths live one week.

I had about 20 pupea and 18 of them did emerge as a moth.
It's a lot of work to collect the eggs because the females will only lay 2-3 eggs per leaf and each morning I had between 200-400 eggs to collect (it took me 1 hour each morning to do that).

The eggs hatch after 3-5 days, depending on temperature. And after that, you have a lot of tiny worms to feed! But they grow really fast.

It's a lot of work and it requires a lot of patience, but at the end, I think it's worth it!

This is a site that explains every steps:
Hornworms


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Lisabeth

1.2 Bearded dragons (Flake, Rusty and Rainbow)
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