Hornworms

All About Hornworms


All About 5 Spotted Hawk Moths

Common pest to most beautiful decorative and colourful to me I love the little eyes down their sides. Seeing the difference between these guys and the gentle friendly calm silkworms in behavior is something I didn't expect. These guys are aggressive and fight with each other. They use their helmet-like heads to swing back and forth and headbutt then bite the next guy  They also bite people I found out the hard way hee hee ouch! I've been feeding them tomato-red bell pepper and mulberry leaves so far so good! The two in my picture are hanging out on a stalk of tomato plant my neighbor let me prune from her plant in a vase in the window the plant does quite well. The leaves are toxic though so the worms can't be feeders now. They hide and camouflage so well in the leaves if someone didn't know they were there they'd never be seen.

I put a few wanderers into a deli container with dry coconut fiber substrate and they just dug right in. They look like this now in 19-23 days I should be seeing a few big sphinx moths

Sept 19 Finally one decided to come out at midnight :)

Look at the size of that eye! Last night it showed us how

it makes a perfect spiral with its little curly mouth wow.

unlike the silk moths, these guys can fly best to keep the lid on

Well, Back to the drawing board no eggs this time I might of accidentally let them dry out too much only got this one moth. Try again :)

Very Cool Hornworm Close Up Poster

June 8, 2011

Took me long enough but going to give these guys another try see what happens.  :)

I've got about 20 nicely nestled in moist substrate pupating. I'm hoping they don't dry out this time as I won't be taking them out early to look at them. I've also changed their diet a bit. Instead of fresh veggies, I've been giving them the silkworm chow. Does fine as far as I can tell. If I get some hatchlings I'll be experimenting with a hornworm chow recipe I found.

This is my set up so far. last time the moths didn't have anything to climb up to pump up their wings so I put sticks in. The pupae are dug down at the bottom of each container, not taking them out this time just going to see if they come out by themselves.

June 24

3 hawk moths emerged late last night. I've taken out some of the containers now and added a small tomato plant. I see why they call them hummingbird moths now. They really do fly like one. They climbed out of the dirt themselves and used the sticks I put in to get their wings out nice. The little container with the chains is the hummingbird food. I've just punched a few good size holes in the lid filled it up full. I've got two Repti Glo lights on top of the tank. One is a 5 tube the other is a two curly bulb type. I am trying to give them a natural day and night lighting. Hopefully to the lights will keep the tomato plant going longer.

Here's two of them

Two have mated now waiting to see where she will lay her eggs. Very neat is the way their eyes reflect light like cat eyes.

I can't see it in the picture working on a vid that shows it better. After she lays her eggs I'll put her outside since she is native here.

Caught one having a drink.

Whoo-hoo ! 12 moths so far have emerged perfectly with beautifully spread wings and have placed over 100 eggs all over the tank but mostly on the underside of the tomato plant leaves. I collected them one by one with my fingernails and a razor blade.  They camouflage so well their lovely pale green colour.

Collected over 500 this morning. There were about 3 of them going at the tomato plant late last night and early this morning.

Right on time about 2.5 days later almost all of them have hatched. I've got three more batches to go. Should have over 1000 hornworms when all is done.  I think I might have made to many as usual. I did release a couple of moths last night though. I enjoyed watching them fly to their freedom.

I couldn't get a clear picture of the hatchlings my camera is not that good.

They constantly eat and fight with each other. They went from yellow to pale green and now because of the food I'm giving them they have turned light blue.

They grow so FAST! Wholey! I'm feeding them a hornworm recipe that is doing just nicely could use a preservative though.

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 Summer 2013