Brahmaea Hearseyi disease?

Hello everyone,

I recently got about 19 Brahmaea Hearseyi hatched from eggs, however majority of them has died with very strange behaviour, they would drop down from the leaves and start twitching around like having a seizure, but no sign of vomiting, maybe a bit of wet shit but not always. After 2-3 days like this, they would shrink and die.

I tried to keep this species a bit moist like the B. Hearseyi breeding report suggested, keep the paper tower moist and keep them a bit airtight with poked holes to increase humidity.

At first I thought this might be my issue is misting the larvae (since the report suggested so as these need high humidity level), so I stop doing that for 2 days, the larvae grew to L2, and it happened again today... No mist or moistened the paper towel at all. I put my privet branch in those water capsules for flowers and I notice that some caterpillars would go down to the water capsules to drink from the hole(?).

Another cause I could think of is the quality of the privet leaves. It's very cold right now so a lot of privet in my areas got frost damage (or get cut down by the city), the leaves would turn brighter green colour, softer leaves and sometimes purple spots. I have never heard of any issues with feeding privet in the winter and my most other caterpillars seem to be fine with it (D. Nerii, A. Atlas), although some of them have died from wet shit diarrhea so I'm thinking this might be an issue...

If anyone has clue, please let me know! Or let me know general advice on how to get rid of disease... I have tried bleaching my containers and cages recently but I'm not sure if it is enough.

Although the cats did not vomit, pesticide seems to be the most plausible cause... Thank you

Quote from Fede

There is a tecniche that sometimes worked to me, at least I've checked it with partial succeed.

As fast as you see the first symptoms, submerge the cats I water during some minutes (2/3). Don't worry if it seem that are drought. Then, dry the cats with absorbent tissue. A heat focus (not too hot) it's convenient. You'll see some of them came back into life!.

Depending on the poison and how much food they have taken, it works!

I want to wait to see if this method would work but unfortunately only 1 survived out of 4 caterpillars... They seem rather weak already when I tried this method.

Quote from suparmani

Hi Linh,

if atlas and nerii doing well on the same privet the host must be okay for hearseyi too. I assume that you did receive eggs with a disease. Unfortunately cannot confirm. We have had some rearings not going well in past two years probably caused due to contaminated foodplants. An unknown disease and we are breeding Saturniidae and Brahmaeidae for more than 50 years.

Ulrich

In both my atlas and nerii, there were some deaths, they had diarrhea, turn brown and would die slowly over a few days. Majority of the population seems fine but I couldn't determine the causes of this disease.

The Hearseyi on the same host plant cutted from the same place displayed different behaviour like seizure but they did not vomit nor diarrhea.

I have since switched to new privet location, the remaining Hearseyi seems fine so far so I think the old privet might be sprayed or have some kind of issues.