Silkworm Egg Incubation

Just started my first round of eggs from my silkworms. Was wondering about the incubation of the eggs or specifically how long they should stay in the incubator after they hatch? I read in some places to leave them in the incubator for 2 weeks after hatching, but other sources say remove them immediately because the food will cause condensation and kill the baby worms. If anyone has some experience with this and could offer some advice I would be much obliged. Thanks!

Kyle

Hey kyle,

They should be kept warm throughout their whole life cycle, or at least up unto the stage where you want them size wise.
You do need to be cognizant of condensation though.

I would follow this caresheet:
http://www.mulberryfarms.com/Care-Raising-Tips-12.html

-Brandon

Thank you! I have been successfully raising them at a room temp of 72F. These are my first eggs though so I haven’t raised them through the first few instars yet. Thank you for the info! I figured the Mulberry care sheet is probably one of the better ones out there.

I don't use an incubator at all to hatch my eggs.

They simply go into an sterilized (using F10) plastic takeaway tub that's sealed to make it airtight.
It sits on the coffee table ( never colder than 23 degrees C in our home ) until they start hatching at which time I either add a sliver of chow or a small fresh mulberry leaf.

The trick is to keep the rearing conditions in the sealed tub
> dry
> clean
> and to keep micro-predators such as house ants, small spiders, small wasps out.

If the food starts to show any white or yellow fluffy mold you need to remove the moldy stuff immediately as it's lethal to the worms.

Commercially available eggs have usually been keep in a chiller , so should start hatching inside a 1 to 3 weeks.
I keep my surplus eggs in zip lock bags (on the paper they were laid onto) in the door of the refrigerator (for up to 2 years) . If the cool place for keeping the egg dormant is colder than 7 degC it will kill the eggs. Once the eggs have been warmed up , you have to let them hatch as rechilling them seems to kill them.

Thanks Kingofnobbys. I read your thread on raising silkworms through and through when I started growing these little buggers. It has been of tremendous help so thank you for that. I used what I learned from your thread and coupled that with my internet research and now my limited hands on experience and so far so good. I'm very close to the point now where I am going to have an overabundance of silkworms. I have an extra 4'x2'x2' enclosure though and my birthday is this month so I'm going to talk my wife into letting me get #2 to help with the surplus of bugs I have accumulated. Anyway, I decided to go with the incubator just because our weather here in Houston can be super erratic, especially this time of year. We have 40-50 degree temperature shifts and huge swings in humidity. My house swings from about 65F to 70F. Of course that will steady off and just be hot pretty soon and house will remain at 70-72F. The larger worms have done fine with that, but I decided for the incubator so I could control the climate for the hatches. I scooped up a still air incubator for like $40 on Amazon. It worked really well. The eggs hatched a week ago and they will get moved into a new container tonight and probably come out of the incubator. I left them in there for a week so far.

Kyle