If you raise mealworms, PLEASE be aware of the Grain Mite, a teeny tiny whitish mite that can come into your mealworm colony via oats, wheat, chicken grain, and so on and so forth... EACH female mite can lay 800 eggs per day that can survive dormant for up to a year without hatching. There is NO cure for these mites, the only way to get rid of them is to destory the colony and start over.
I have a colony that went from being mite free to infested to the point that it looks like there is sawdust all over my worm bins, worms, etc. in less than a week.
I now have to destroy my colony, who had just produced it's first bacth of baby wormies
I am so sad.
Some people say you can avoid getting them by microwaving your grains/worm substrate BEFORE giving it to them as it will kill any eggs or larva of the grain mite.
I am the most impatient person in the world and I actually stuck it out and raised these guys that I had bought and then had sent to me by RedHen so kindly, I took really good care of them and kept them clean and everything but now that they start producing and I'm all excited, I have to freeze them or burn them or something and start all over
Apparently the mites need moisture so keeping veggies in the substrate can feed the mites and cause them to hatch.
