Hatched too early!!!

[drotski]

I had about a dozen Chinese ooths in diapause, expecting them to take 4-8 weeks of incubation to hatch. After 9 days of incubation, the first hatched!!! My fruit fly cultures are all dead (replacements on order), and the temps at night are below freezing! (We had 3" of snow on Monday). The weather is slightly colder than was expected. 

Can the remaining ooths be placed back in diapause? 

Will the freezing temps kill the nymphs if I release them?

I have seen wild insects alive in my area for about 3 weeks now, and daytime highs are in the 50's and 60's most days.

I also have 3 Carolina ooths incubating. I have the same concerns. 

 

[CosbyArt]

I've had the same problem before, and actually tried putting some native ooths back in diapause.

Eggs in ooths diapause fine, but once the eggs are exposed to steady warm temps for weeks and develop into nymphs and get close to hatching, they don't have a stop button at that point. The ones I re-diapaused like that only hatched a few nymphs once I got them back out and incubating (between 1 to 2 weeks and all the ooths i had were affected). If you do re-diapuase only for a few days (at 40-50 F temps) it should not affect the ooths so bad/quickly, but after a few days the ooths will likely have bad hatching issues (if they don't hatch during diapause itself as I had a few hatch anyway in the fridge after re-diapausing).

Yes, nymphs are much more fragile than the adult mantids. Even the adults can only withstand freezing temps a couple of times typically before dying off, the nymphs likely would die the first freeze (and be affected health wise with anything below 50 F). Ideally the low temps should be no lower than 60's F to release them - which is your highs so they wouldn't stand a chance.

I have several wild ooths that were laid and stay outside (I just found them and watch), and with my temps of mid 70's during the day and low 50's at night for about a month now, those ooths still haven't hatched yet (I check them frequently to better understand their cycle in my area).

For the problem of no fruit flies there are only two solutions really. Either order some express mailed overnight, or buy enough from local pet stores to last a week or two so you can get some cultures going in the meantime up and populated. The only other solution would be trap some wild FF's, but with such low temps the wild FF populations would be non-existent right now for you. The way it sounds, hopefully the ones you ordered arrive in a few days to save them from survival cannibalism.

The last idea is to buy Melanogaster FF pupae, but as it will not ship until at least Monday and 2-3 days to arrive and another 2-3 days to hatch, that will put it between next Friday and Tuesday at least before they will be ready. That will however jump start any cultures with plenty of live adults if you are in need of them. The FF from SpiderPharm are the wild flying variety though, just a heads-up.