Hi! Sorry, very new at the whole "bugs" thing, and I'm still learning. I spotted this the other day (not sure of the stink bug species, possibly Nezara viridula), promptly spent hours watching macro timelapses of stink bugs hatching, going from gooey babies to hard shelled nymphs...
Now to the question which has been bugging me: is there such a thing as "too late to hatch"? Can they "harden" inside the egg and just die there (maybe in the blackened eggs)?
Thanks!
Edit:
I found another nest of the same species and took it home. So: have a top view of the hatched eggs and some first instar nymphs while I'm at it!
Oh yeah feel you with the slow creep from casual photography to full on 'must collect and raise everybody i find!!!' Next you will find yourself wasting hours each morning staring obsessively at your bug eggs to catch the exact moment the baby wasps start chewing their way out hahaha, and you will regret nothing :) I've been pretty into little plastic containers you get for glitter/makeup powder for on the go collections lately, as you can get a pretty good photo through the flat topped lids (my set up is a microscope with a mount on the eyepiece for my cell phone camera). But I love the idea of the larger glass box so you can create more of a backdrop and get shots with your macro camera! Definitely share some photos here of your set up as you work it out!
For the invasive ones, yeah best to put the whole bag in the freezer after you get your shots, but then id just toss the whole ziplock bag, leaving it sealed, into the bin rather than toss the contents back outside, just to be safe. That's how I disposed of all my samples when I used to do big survey loops, rearing on the go, and didn't want to spread things around.
Define "slow creep", because my experience has been "Wednesday, get into photography again. Saturday, buy a Canon R7 and a macro lens.". Which is roughly the spending timeline of that time I got into bird photography and splurged on telescopic lenses. Hyperfixations are fun! (And educational!)
The plastic containers are genius. I'll bookmark that!
Ahaha...okay let's call it "exponential escalation" instead 😅 have you played with iNaturalist at all? That was my next step in the bug collecting, photographing and identification obsession chain haha
Not iNaturalist, but observations.be, where I've been playing real life Pokemon for a month or so now. For the most part, I found myself a nice overgrown spot between a parking lot and train tracks, and I'm documenting everything I find there.