I meant from the time the egg is layed until it hatches, the larvae go through 4 - 5 instars, and then pupate, emerge as a beetle and then be old enough to lay an egg.
Depending on food and temperature, it takes about two to four months for them to complete their life cycle. It takes 8 to 12 weeks for them to lay eggs. So if you want worms in the winter, start your colony in early fall.
We recommend you sterilize the meal at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours to kill grain mites and meal moths, it will still keep its nutritional value for your worms.
Yes, exactly. Anytime you have a manure product there is the possibility that it has nitrogen in it and it could heat up and explode. I don't know how accurate it is, but in some books I've read people have used fertilizer when making bombs! I think if we had a lot of testing, labeling, and...
We can't actually ship our fertilizer (which is sad, we could make a small fortune off of it). We give it away to local volunteer community gardeners or we sell it in large bags for $3 to cover the cost of labor and the bag. I wish we could sell it!! Now mealworms, we sell those :) hehe
I really like the results I've gotten in my garden with it. When my dad first realized it was good for re-selling, he brought some home in a coffee can and wrote "F + B" in castings on our front lawn in big letters (he and my mom's initials). 3 days later, that grass was dark green and lush...
Hi Bobbie :)
You can either store your mealworms in the refrigerator (they'll keep a couple of months); or you can keep them in a heated room so the life cycle continues.
For the eggs that might remain in the drawer; you can keep it for about 2 weeks (the average incubation time is 4-7 days).
Hi Chrissy! I hail from CSUF majoring in Biology myself. Some topics that we've found have issues you might be able to use:
1. The mealworm castings (manure) are used for fertilizer; some farmers are concerned with E. coli in the gut of the mealworm. It would be interesting to know if...
It depends on how much you want to feed your chickens. For growing the mealworms, you need to let them pupate and turn into beetles for the first cycle to maximize your feeders and worms to reset for laying eggs. For each beetle you should get 15 to 20 adult mealworms in about 6 months. You...