The silkworm eggs

My first idea, to find someone who could offer us the silkworm eggs, was to contact the Centro de Artesanato de Freixo de Espada à Cinta. That's where, back in 2011, I got to see the whole cycle, from egg to yarn. But I hadn't been there since that time, and I came to know only now, that the Center was shut down in mid 2012.
They say that there is one lady responsible for keeping the silk cycle, but it is no longer available to the public, and like most things that under the institutional power in Portugal become opaque and not very agile, in spite of the several contacts we made, there was no answer. So, we turned the page and looked for another solution.
Because of this failure, I learned that in the Casa da Seda, that is a part of the Centro de Ciência Viva de Bragança, they still breed the silk worm, although they don't process the fiber. With just a phone call and a simple request, they will even mail you the silkworm eggs. Since their goal is to teach about the silkworm and its life cycle, they try to offer the eggs to those that also have an interest, but it's usually schools and children that request them. Since the silkworm breeding is also carried by the Casa da Seda own technicians, they were also wonderful at answering all our questions.

Obviously, these eggs were layed by last year's butterflies. They keep them stored until the next year by keeping them inside a paper envelope, in a cool and dry place. Only when the mulberry tree leaves start to grow, in Spring, do they take the eggs out of storage, so that they can resume their cycle, but only when their food is already available.
When we picked them up it was early March and the black mulberry trees in Serralves were still naked, so we also kept them in storage until now.
In the above photos, you can see most eggs are of a brown colour, and then a few are bright yellow. The yellow ones are the ones that are were not fertilized last year. Only the darker ones were expected to hatch.

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[11.03.2015 / Silkworm breeding for the Saber Fazer em Serralves program]