Mealworm farming

[kwol]

Finally got to see what everone was talking about. I've had beetles for a while so I figured I'd shift through the bran with my fingers. Then the bran started to move on its own Very tiny still, but i can clearly see them. Now to see how long it takes them to grow up.

Hooray!

 

[kwol]

MY FIRST EVER PUPA!!!! Wow, got them in Wednesday and I just found this little guy sitting on top of the oats, just chilling I have so much more than beetlemania!!!!

Great! Now hopefully the rest will begin to follow suit. Your new beetles will be very light in color. If they are still surrounded by pupae, it is easy to miss them. I keep a small carrot in with my pupae and the new beetles are usually drawn to it.

 

[NewMomma]

Great! Now hopefully the rest will begin to follow suit. Your new beetles will be very light in color. If they are still surrounded by pupae, it is easy to miss them. I keep a small carrot in with my pupae and the new beetles are usually drawn to it.

Woo Hoo!!

And I only have one so far, and I'm not able to stay away from my colony haha I wanna see more pupa!! I am way too excited right now

 

[DHinton]

Woo Hoo!!

And I only have one so far, and I'm not able to stay away from my colony haha I wanna see more pupa!! I am way too excited right now

wait until they start turning into beetles. you'll be even more excited. then when they go from white, to shades of brown, and then finally black beetles!

 

[azygous]

Does anyone have an explanation as to why/ how my meal worms managed to eat a perfect oval into a sheet of newspaper? (Photo)

 

[cluck-cluck]

Does anyone have an explanation as to why/ how my meal worms managed to eat a perfect oval into a sheet of newspaper? (Photo)

That's really cool! You have mathematical bugs! LOL. I did notice my newspaper was being eaten last time I looked as well. I'm glad to say that keeping my mealies outside has kept mites at bay so far (we have extremely dry weather here) and my little worms are about a quarter inch long. I thought I had lost them, but they're finally thriving. I must find a better way to care for them during the winter I guess. I thought I had lost them all.

Still, I hope I'll get the numbers up to a point where I can actually feed them to my birds! Geepers, all this time, and they had only one time gotten to eat meal worms, and that was when I had a mite infestation and collected a few to wash and save, then dumped the rest in the yard for the chickens to eat. So glad it looks like my colony is recovering!

 

[acreed]

Before (or after) you put the paper in there, did you sit something with an oval bottom on it hat may have had something on the bottom they would be attracted to? That is what it looks like to me.

 

[miraquila]

I'm about to read 607 pages of posts about mealworms! I started a colony last fall and finally got babies. Now I have what I think might be an infestation of mites. I thought they were tiny mealworm egg hatchlings but there are millions. I'm sure somewhere in these 600 pages someone talks about this topic, but what do the mealworm eggs and hatchlings look like versus the mites? These things are tiny, white, oval and they move. And there are millions, well thousands anyway. I promise to go back and read from the beginning but reading about mites has made me itch.
Thanks for any help!
Mira

 

[cluck-cluck]

Yup, I got mites too. I ended up taking some pupa, beetles and worms, rinsing them in a strainer with cool water for an awful long time, the putting them in a new batch of (in my case, corn meal). I'm just starting to get babies after the entire winter of things not looking so well. The rest, I fed to my chickens. (mites won't hurt the chickens). I was afraid, recently, that I was getting mites again, and took my box outside. It looked a bit dusty in there... not sure if I had mites or not again, but outside in my neck of the woods, is very dry. Usually we have under 15 percent humidity, and there have been no more signs of mites. I've decided that I'll keep them outside from now on, at least until winter, when I'll have to figure something out???

Good luck with your mealies!

 

[miraquila]

thank you cluck-cluck - that's helpful. I still am not sure what to look for in the way of mealworm eggs vs mite eggs. Do you know what they look like as eggs? When the mealworms hatch, are they already wormy or are they little bugs that turn into worms?