Artisans Angkor
When the worms have grown enough, they are put in baskets. From there, they will spin their cocoons in five days and will produce about three hundreds meters of silk each. The cocoons are then put in sunlight to avoid them undergoing their metamorphosis into mature moths. However, 20% of them reach the breeding process and the female moths will lay and hatch its eggs within nine to twelve days.
The cocoons are soaked in hot water in order to soften the sericin (also known as silk gum) which coat the fibres and stick the cocoons together. Silk threads are then unwound and reeled together to produce a single thread. Weavers at Angkor Silk Farm make both raw silk and fine silk that do not have the same texture at all. Sericin has not been completely removed from raw silk threads, which will give a rougher texture to the fabric at the end.
Abacarus hystrix
Cereal rust mite eggs are exceptionally small and are placed in leaf vein grooves by the mite. The eggs usually begin hatching at the beginning of spring (March in the Northern Hemisphere and September in the Southern Hemisphere) and once they have reached the juvenile stage, the mites mature very quickly (16–18 days). Once the mites are at the adult stage they often travel to the lower section of the plant where they feed on young tissues. Mites are always present for the full growing season of the plant, but activity has been seen to decrease as the temperature begins to rise, this is because unlike other mite species the cereal rust mite favors much cooler temperatures.