I have left over Capt Jack’s Dead Bug bacillus and Spinosad bacillus. I will not be using these until next year. These are live microbes. I’m thinking about adding distilled water and molasses to allow them to live and grow during storage. That would be breeding them. If I have half a container left, with a million(?) bacillus in solution, I would fill to the top, feed it something, and have 2 million bacillus home grown in a few months.
Would this not work? Is there something better than molasses to feed them?
Comments?
Here’s a very technical paper that I barely understand about optimizing spinosad fermentation:
"4.1. Optimum Carbohydrates for Spinosad Production
Glucose, lactose, mannitol, sucrose, sorbitol, glycerol, maltose, and soluble starch were evaluated for their utilization by S. spinosa in the minimal media. The results showed that S. spinosa could grow significantly more abundantly on media containing glucose, mannitol, maltose, sucrose, or glycerol than on media containing other carbohydrates as a solo carbon source.
Further experiments showed that mannitol and glucose significantly enhanced spinosad production in the fermentation media."
Mannitol powder is most commonly used as a sugar-substitute sweetener Amazon $11.
The fermentable sugars in molasses are sucrose, glucose and fructose; there are other sugars present in molasses, they are either unfermentable or are in small enough quantities that they can be ignored.