Silkmoths and more: Automeris liberia

Oh, you noticed that there are fewer posts then before? I'm having a very bad year. When I wrote in the first post of this year, that a few species less wouldn't hurt, I didn't meant it to happen this way. What's going on? We are experiencing what must be the coldest and wettest summer in the history of Belgium. Seriously, it's August and I had to turn on the central heating. Temperatures keep on dropping back to twenty degrees Celsius and lower. No, that's not the night temperature. I wish it was. All this is not beneficial when trying to breed silkmoths. The constantly wet plants are covered with mildew and all kinds of other fungi and diseases. I am loosing one brood after the other because of bacteria and other nasty stuff; which are spreading like wildfire in this wet weather. On top of that there seems to be very little stock on the market this year. It looks like I'm not the only one having trouble.

The most victims were among the oak feeders. This time of the year, oaks around here always look a little sick, but this year it's even worse. I simply can't find any healthy plants. I started to notice when caterpillars started to drop dead one after the other. I tried to save as many as possible by switching to other food plants. That's the only reason why these liberia caterpillars started on English oak (Quercus robur) and ended on Beech (Fagus sylvatica). This usually is a very easy species to breed, but not this time. I will have to redo them. I think the few pupae I have are all males.