Eggs and Baby Silkworms

When the eggs are first laid by the female silkworm moth, they are a cream color.

 As they develop the eggs turns to light brown, dark brown, then almost black.

The black color is actually the little grub inside the egg. Above the silkworm is emerging from the egg leaving the white casing behind. If you look closely, you can see some little grubs still curled up inside the egg. The clear white eggs have already hatched.

Very small, only about 3-4mm long.

The mulberry leaves were kept fresh in water in a cool-box with ice. They were rinsed and dried ( the caterpillars prefer moist not wet leaves) and cut into strips.  The baby silkworms also like the moist edges of the leaves.  These were laid over the top of  the old leaves and the silkworms would immediately crawl up onto the fresh leaves.  Then later, the old leaves were removed with tweezers, ensuring no little caterpillars were thrown out.  Often, after double-checking, a little fellow would be found on the leaves and happily rescued.

It's fun watching them stream down the stalk highways.

The young larvae have lots of little hairs.

Traffic jam!

Photographs by M. Vaughan.