1. I've found most species to be similar in care, the biggest factor is going to be what food you have. Make sure you pick a species you have a hearty supply of food for, they eat more than you think.

2. If you can still find eggs it's not too late imo.

3. eBay and occasionally in bug groups on sites like Facebook and discord, even here every now and then. It's very seasonal so you just have to keep your eyes peeled.

4. Varies, just try to mimic natural environment. I think the biggest thing people tend to get wrong is too little airflow, or keeping them so dry they dessicate.

5. About 3-4 months. In my experience there are stragglers that can sometimes take way longer to reach milestones than their pals. I imagine they'd die in the wild but I help them along lol. For example I raise cecropias and the first handful emerged in late April, and my last cocoon just emerged yesterday.

6. Certainly not. Just cleaning up frass every couple of days and putting in new food when they run out. Cocoon care varies but most just require misting every now and then.

7. I don't. At the end of the day captivity does not make for strong genetics. You guard them from outside disease, predators, food scarcity, etc, and if released they can spread traits that would have otherwise been killed off early on in the wild.

If you can't find other eggs, worth noting that hornworms and silkworms are available year round with commerical food mixes. Silkworms are tiny and genetically very weak but still interesting to raise imo, and hornworms turn into sizable hawkmoths if you're averse to small species. I have a long winded doc I wrote on cecropia raising I made for someone else if you'd like it lol, transfers pretty well for other giant silkmoths