Mealworm farming

[lenjac]

Hi,
I bought a shipping container to house my mealworms.
To my horror, they started looking sick and dying.
Turns out they had mould mite, diagnosed by an entomologist.
She said the mite would have come in with my bran substate, however I've figured out since that they were already in the shipping container.

My husband reminded me that the container was sitting on muddy ground at the sales yard...hence the food source for the mites.
I've shifted any live worms onto new substrate, however many are still dying.
Have read somewhere on the net, probably birdcare .com, that the mites harbour viruses and bacteria, so this must be why I'm having so much fun!!!

The entomologist is an expert in her field, so as a matter of interest I asked her about freezing/microwaving the substrate.
She said that the bran would have to be kept in a deep freeze for 3 weeks, then warmed up for a couple of days (probably to let cysts emerge) and then returned to the freezer for another 3 weeks. This would not work out for me.
Microwaving the substrate does not work and this I can understand as we have seen an ant or two survive after microwaving.

According to the owner of a company that I occasionally buy mealworms, he doesn't treat his substrate. (Must get eaten very quickly)

I'm going to try not freezing my substrate in future, although must admit that pantry moth is another problem to be dealt with.
Hope this info helps somebody else.

Jacqui

 

[yyz0yyz0]

Help! My two worm farms are both infested with some type of bug besides mealworms.

I noticed what looked like a lot of Frass dust on the lid of my farm, when I looked at it under a magnifying glass I noticed that it was not dust as it was moving. There are thousands and thousands of these tiny light colored bugs in my mealworm farms.

Am I screwed?

I was thinking of sorting out as many of worms/pupa/beetles as I can, putting them into a temp container, cleaning the farm containers thoroughly. Before I put the critters back into the cleaned containers I was thinking of putting them in a sieve and giving them a quick rinse to hopefully remove any remaining invaders.

Is there any possibility this will work, will I kill all my worms/pupa/beetles by rinsing them, am I wasting my time?

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Help! My two worm farms are both infested with some type of bug besides mealworms.

I noticed what looked like a lot of Frass dust on the lid of my farm, when I looked at it under a magnifying glass I noticed that it was not dust as it was moving. There are thousands and thousands of these tiny light colored bugs in my mealworm farms.

Am I screwed?

I was thinking of sorting out as many of worms/pupa/beetles as I can, putting them into a temp container, cleaning the farm containers thoroughly. Before I put the critters back into the cleaned containers I was thinking of putting them in a sieve and giving them a quick rinse to hopefully remove any remaining invaders.

Is there any possibility this will work, will I kill all my worms/pupa/beetles by rinsing them, am I wasting my time?

You have grain mites. They really aren't all that harmful to the mealworms directly, but they are a mess. The high moisture conditions that promote the growth of grain mites also fosters the development of pathogens that can be harmful to the mealworms. The most direct way to get rid of them is to reduce the ambient humidity below 60% or so. They can't reproduce at lower humidity and they'll quickly die off. I'd wipe up as many as I can around the edges of the colony, feed vegetables sparingly and get it dried out.

 

[lenjac]

Thanks, guys, for the acknowlegement !
Jacqui

 

[lenjac]

I don't know how large your set-up is, but I found DE (diatomaceous earth) to be a really big help around containers and on the floor. Unfortunately, you can't put it in with the mealworms.
However, it is totally non toxic, but very fine, so you have to be careful about breathing it in. I tried wormwood in the trays of mealworms, but not sure if it did anything to get rid of the mite, but my mite problem was a different variety to yours.
Jacqui

 

[zarafa121]

You have grain mites. They really aren't all that harmful to the mealworms directly, but they are a mess. The high moisture conditions that promote the growth of grain mites also fosters the development of pathogens that can be harmful to the mealworms. The most direct way to get rid of them is to reduce the ambient humidity below 60% or so. They can't reproduce at lower humidity and they'll quickly die off. I'd wipe up as many as I can around the edges of the colony, feed vegetables sparingly and get it dried out.

I am in the middle of a grain mite infestation myself and trying to do what you, Gallo, suggest. Tell me if I am on the right track: I cranked up the heat in the bathroom, took out all of the vegetables, keep water usage to a minimum, and isolated the bids to a step stool to keep them contained to some degree (in other words, not going all over the place). I started that more than 24 hours ago. I can see the little white dots crawling up the sides of the containers and wipe them down frequently to kill off as many as possible. My question: how long will it take for the low humidity to work? Will they need to go through all of their stages before wanting to breed? I have a good number of beetles, some pupae, and some larvae. The mites started in the bin with the eggs. I even put double sided sticky tape around the tops of the bins, but it looks like they are walking right over it. I thought it was a clever idea, but it looks like it didn't work. :-(. Words of encouragement are welcome. If worse comes to worst, I will sacrifice everything and start over. At least the birds will get a few bugs.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quote:
That all sounds good, and really, no need to consider starting over yet (unless you live in a super humid environment). Two things to keep in mind is that, one, this will take time and two, the mealworms are much hardier under conditions of low moisture/humidity than are the grain mites. The trick is to get it as dry inside as possible. I wouldn't add any vegetables until the infestation is over. Under very low humidity levels the mites just die. The lifespan of the mite is also much shorter under warmer conditions than under cooler conditions, so by keeping it warmer, you should cycle through that last generation of mites fairly quickly. Here is another nice page that talks about how mites are influenced by moisture and temperature.

 

[zarafa121]

That all sounds good, and really, no need to consider starting over yet (unless you live in a super humid environment). Two things to keep in mind is that, one, this will take time and two, the mealworms are much hardier under conditions of low moisture/humidity than are the grain mites. The trick is to get it as dry inside as possible. I wouldn't add any vegetables until the infestation is over. Under very low humidity levels the mites just die. The lifespan of the mite is also much shorter under warmer conditions than under cooler conditions, so by keeping it warmer, you should cycle through that last generation of mites fairly quickly. Here is another nice page that talks about how mites are influenced by moisture and temperature.

Thanks. I am on the verge of panic, specifically because they keep coming. I wipe down the lid and into the bin, and an hour or so later, there's another brigade. I bit the bullet and threw out the bin with what I was hoping were mealworm eggs. That was the most heavily infested. I read an article on Google on how a person raising geckos gets rid of them. She wrote that cooler temps and low humidity would kill them off. I transferred the larvae, all 59 of them, into another container and will put them in the fridge for a few days. I can do the same with the beetles, but I have several hundred of them. I don't know what the relative humidity is. I live in south central PA, we just had a couple rainy days, and now the sun is out and clear. That's why I turned the heat up in the bathroom - it was the only place I could decrease the humidity without affecting the whole house, but it's warm in there now - 75 degrees. So, I turned the heat off. I really appreciate your encouragement. I'll get through this, and I want to do it with as much information as I can. I also took the rest of the bran and baked it yesterday at 130 degrees for a good half hour. The only place that I see that I might have to start over is with the eggs that the beetles have deposited recently. I think I can safely put that bin in the fridge as well. Thanks again.

 

[crazy huhn]

On Page 659... Less than 100 pages to go!

Quick question, is the list of BYC folks selling on the first page still accurate, and updated?

I do

 

[azygous]

There's nothing that is guaranteed to drive a meal worm farmer to panic than the sight of grain mites. It makes you itch just to look at them, never mind the itch you get when trying to inspect them up real close and accidentally snorting them up your nose. (Yeah, done that.)

When I had my first infestation, I took every larva and beetle out and rinsed them under warm water, and carefully replaced them in new, fresh bedding that I had carefully microwave heated .

Sometime later, I discovered the mites were ba-ack. Yikes! But I microwaved the @#$%^& bran! Well, turns out microwaving doesn't heat uniformly and some grain mite eggs survive. So I oven heated a new batch of bran and rolled oats at 200 F for twenty minutes and moved everyone back in again.

But, guess what! They still returned! Along about now was when someone here suggested I simply removed the lids from my worm farm and let the substrate dry out for several days instead of giving all the worms and beetles a bath and replacing the bedding. This dries out and kills the mites, and they vanish like magic.

I also discovered that if you really, really want to make sure you don't get grain mites, you need to oven heat the substrate at 300-350 F for fifteen minutes to half an hour, stirring halfway through. I now make it a practice of throwing some bran and oats in the oven whenever I'm baking cookies or making a cake. That way, I always have treated substrate handy when needed. And no more mites since.