Kip’s Comments - January 7, 2023

Raw Materials

I am not a quitter! Featured here may be the raw materials necessary to create 36 waxworms into a meal of fresh fish. Notice that I used the word “may” to describe the possibility of converting bait into food. There are no guarantees.

An expert angler told me he uses “spikes” for bait. I considered buying spikes, but the cost was considerably higher for something that may or may not be worthwhile. And by the way, supposedly there are 36 waxworms in this container. Apparently some are microscopic in size or excellent hiders - I did not find them.

While we are discussing waxworms, I did some research on them. According to Wikipedia, waxworms may have some value much higher than bait or food for reptile pets. They also may not be capable of this. Take a read of this:

“Biodegradation of plastic

Two species of waxworm, Galleria mellonella and Plodia interpunctella have both been observed eating and digesting polyethylene plastic. The waxworms metabolize polyethylene plastic films into ethylene glycol, a compound which biodegrades rapidly.[8] This unusual ability to digest matter classically thought of as non-edible may originate with the waxworm's ability to digest beeswax as a result of gut microbes that are essential in the biodegradation process.[9] Two strains of bacteria, Enterobacter asburiae and Bacillus sp, isolated from the guts of Plodia interpunctella waxworms, have been shown to decompose polyethylene in laboratory testing.[10][11] In a test with a 28-day incubation period of these two strains of bacteria on polyethylene films, the films' hydrophobicity decreased. In addition, damage to the films' surface with pits and cavities (0.3-0.4 μm in depth) was observed using scanning electron microscopy and atomic-force microscopy.

Placed in a polyethylene shopping bag, approximately 100 Galleria mellonella waxworms consumed almost 0.1 gram (0.0032 ounces) of the plastic over the course of 12 hours in laboratory conditions.[12]

Studies carried out in 2020 by Bastian Barton at the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability (LBF) (https://www.lbf.fraunhofer.de/en.html) in Darmstadt, Germany, disproved the ability of Galleria melonella caterpillars to digest and biologically degrade polyethylene. Even though the waxworms would eat holes into polyethylene bags, they ingested only a small proportion, excreted the polyethylene unaltered and showed significant loss of body weight.”

Source: Wikipedia

Waxworms - Image 787644

Our landscape this morning was beautiful. I did not shoot too many pictures due to working on other projects, but I did grab this shot of the Cedar River. By looking into the sun, the scene became nearly monochromatic. For this picture I did convert it to black and white.

Cedar River in Winter - Image 787577