Recent content by Bill Myers

After three years and many requests, Daniel Ambuehl has just uploaded an English version of his "Kinshi - How it's made" video. Enjoy:

First of all, a little background: I learned a long time ago to isolate my larvae in individual containers so that if there was a disease, it wouldn't result in mass fatalities. So, this has me befuddled: A few weeks ago, I noticed that my D. tityus L2's weren't looking very healthy and some...

Attaching the measurement here. 52 mm long, 11.875 grams.

Okay, this is my experimental D. tityus that I kept at around 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit all throughout her larval an pupal stages. The only food source I used for her was rotting wood that I collected from the woods near my house. As you can see, she's a monster! Total time from a hatchling to...

I'm looking for Northern Dusk Singing Cicadas for my pinned collection of North American cicadas. I need a male and female to add to the collection. Specimens should be preserved and in good shape with collection date and location data. PM me if you have one or two that I could buy off of...

Okay, I just took a picture of one of my L3 D. tityus larva's container which is getting ripe for scooping out some poop and throwing in some more substrate. I've circled some of the frass so you can get an idea of what they look like. Most of those white specks? Fungus gnats. Yup, it...

Hears sum water beatles four sail: Cheers P.S. - Just teasing. I'm in a goofy mood this morning. Peter Clausen has some giant waterbugs for sale. Here's his aquatic page: http://shop.bugsincyberspace.com/Aquatics_c11.htm

Continued: Then, for the fun, hands on, messy part; scoop out some wax from the wax toilet bowl ring and start smearing it all the way around your lid like so: Then, place the lid on the container and push down on the center of the lid it to evacuate some of the air. The wax should then...

The cicada (a Tibicen lyricen) and the Tiger beetle were both relaxed. All the rest were pinned shortly after a natural death. Well...except for the Manduca sexta and Hyles lineata moths--they were put into a killing jar to keep their wings from getting damaged before mounting. Okay, here's...

Continuing on with my pinnings: Here is a photo of a Cottonwood Borer and a velvet ant: I'm throwing that one in to show you that you can use just about any type of foam scrap to mount something in a jiffy. Now, bear in mind, the Cottonwood Borer had a gazillion pins (which I have since...

This is the tutorial that got me started: http://www.masscic.org/howto/how-to-preserve-your-cicadas-pinning I'm trying to upload some pictures for you, but I can't seem to upload an attachment at the moment. I don't know if it's with the editor here, or if I've just forgotten how to add an...