Mealworm farming

[Arielle]

If you use glass a fish tank stick a line of clear packing tape all the way around the inside of the tank about 3 to 4 inches above where the top of the feed will be.

The glass is just rough enough that after a bit of dust gets on the glass the beetles will start trying to climb out. Kind of like a fly walking on the windows. The tape is slick enough that the beetles will fall back down. You will have to replace the tape every once in a while.

Don't try to fill the tank up with feed. Having the feed over a couple inches deep keeps too much moisture inside the grain and the next thing you know you have a tank full of mites. Horrid things. An inch to a inch and a half of feed works best.

Interesting on the climbing the glass . . .

DO you think the 2 inches is better because of the depth of the tank -- it not having the same circulation of air that a flatter , say 6 inch, container would have?

 

[aart]

The beetles will eat a large portion of their own eggs so for the highest yield I recommended that you move the beetles into a new container with fresh feed every week. Or at least monthly. Allowing the eggs to stay behind in the old container to develop.

I did this for quite some time when feeding bluebirds. Worked like a charm. I used 3 sets of plastic Sterilite drawers and about 50 beetles with occasional replacements. Moving the beetles to the next drawer weekly keep me in more worms than the wild birds could eat. About 1/3 cup a day. It took about a month to 6 weeks in nice weather before the worms got big enough to start feeding out. I did find that all the worms didn't grow at the same rate so there was always different sized worms in the drawers. When i got most of large worms out of a drawer i could put the beetles back in the drawer. I would keep that up until the feed needed changing.

This sounds like a great way to segregate staggered colonies!

 

[evemfoster]

Interesting on the climbing the glass . . .

DO you think the 2 inches is better because of the depth of the tank -- it not having the same circulation of air that a flatter , say 6 inch, container would have?

The 2 inch feed depth allows the moisture to evaporate. Any deeper and the moisture doesn't evaporate out well enough from the deeper grain, even from a shallow container. I don't think it matters how deep your container is on the evaporation. But i would be sure to have a good screened cover on the tank. Like the ones for reptiles. Lets air in and keeps out grain moths. And the sides be high enough that the beetles cant climb out. That would be a minimum of a inch and a half above the top of the feed if you haven't got a vented cover that will seal tight.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

The beetles will eat a large portion of their own eggs so for the highest yield I recommended that you move the beetles into a new container with fresh feed every week. Or at least monthly. Allowing the eggs to stay behind in the old container to develop.

I did this for quite some time when feeding bluebirds. Worked like a charm. I used 3 sets of plastic Sterilite drawers and about 50 beetles with occasional replacements. Moving the beetles to the next drawer weekly keep me in more worms than the wild birds could eat. About 1/3 cup a day. It took about a month to 6 weeks in nice weather before the worms got big enough to start feeding out. I did find that all the worms didn't grow at the same rate so there was always different sized worms in the drawers. When i got most of large worms out of a drawer i could put the beetles back in the drawer. I would keep that up until the feed needed changing.

I got careless after a while and had over a hundred beetles and ended up with swarms of worms. Ended up doing a recipe i found on the internet to dry them out like you buy them in stores. You put the worms in a old never to be used for anything else again fry pan. Spray it and the worms with a product like Pam and turn the heat on very low. Stirring until the worms are all dried out and shinny.

After raising meal worms for a few years now I am not recommending you use the drawer system i used to grow your worms in. I found that in about a year the beetles had gnawed on the plastic so much that they could get footholds in the plastic and climb out of the drawers. I switched over to covered containers, I cut a large square out of the lid and use window screen hot glued over the hole for ventilation. I don't find beetles running around inside the house anymore. I had been housing them in the garage but when they get loose they'll get anywhere, so use a container or containers with lids.

This is a common misconception. Cannibalism in this species is less than 3% if cared for properly. The colony below is over 25 years old. If cannibalism was a huge issue, you sure wouldn't know by the number of individuals inside.

If you use glass a fish tank stick a line of clear packing tape all the way around the inside of the tank about 3 to 4 inches above where the top of the feed will be.

The glass is just rough enough that after a bit of dust gets on the glass the beetles will start trying to climb out. Kind of like a fly walking on the windows. The tape is slick enough that the beetles will fall back down. You will have to replace the tape every once in a while.

Don't try to fill the tank up with feed. Having the feed over a couple inches deep keeps too much moisture inside the grain and the next thing you know you have a tank full of mites. Horrid things. An inch to a inch and a half of feed works best.

I never had one climb out, even over the decade that I maintained 20+ colonies. I cleaned them out so rarely that the bran often reached within a couple inches of the top.

 

[hollieben]

ok, how do you keep those beetles from climbing out and all over your house? I am thinking of doing this and would keep them in my garage. But what happens when I go on vacation? Will i come back to an overrun beetle garage?

 

[Arielle]

Quote: How would I go about remiving the frass for the garden but not take the eggs with it??

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

How would I go about remiving the frass for the garden but not take the eggs with it??

I just scrape off the top couple of inches, put it in a bucket, use the bottom for fertilizer and put the contents of the bucket back into the colony. I used to be more careful about waiting and looking for stragglers but I usually didn't find enough to make it worth while.

 

[Arielle]

Quote: THe eggs don't fall down into the frass layer??????

 

[Twinkkitten]

You just made me realize something!! My chickens are hungry because I just just got a foot a of new dirt on my yard. I plan to help a neighbor grow worms. I am phobic! No bugs in fresh dirt. Greetings from midtown Tucson, AZ.

 

[evemfoster]

You are probably right about the misconception on the cannibalism. I never did more than read and believe. Anyway i was told they eat their own eggs, how would you know without a microscope. I did want to grow a lot more worms faster and tried a few different ways to grow worms. When i came across the drawer method i was intrigued (YouTube video?) So, I decided to do an experiment to see what ways worked best.

I did grow the worms both ways. In one container I left 50 beetles in all the time in a permanent home. And in the drawer method i placed 50 Beetles in the first set of drawers and moved them to a new drawer weekly, All containers were the same size and each one got the same amount of food. Yes that does mean the the drawers ended up having 8 times the feed but the adult beetle numbers stayed the same.

I started both setups at the same time and after the worms got big enough to start feeding out i measured out the worms to get the volume in each container. I found that the permanent homed beetles had a lot of worms in the container by total volume ( too long ago to remember the numbers). In fact more than half again the volume of the worms measured out in first removed beetle drawer. The permanent home had worms of all sizes the population was quite thick.

The first drawer had around half the volume of worms when i measured them out. But I was using 8 drawers by then. Drawer 2 had a smaller worms and was a little over a third of the volume of the permanent home. I believe there was just as many worms as drawer 1 they were just smaller. And so on with each drawer having less volume of worms the younger the worms got.

I couldn't measure the worms in the draws that were under a month old. The worms were just too small, went through the strainer. But, adding up the ones i could measure, in volume i had roughly the same amount of worms in the drawers as was in the permanent container. But the thing was as the setup matured there was never any increase in the total volume of worms inside the permanent container. But the total volume of worms did increase in every one of the drawers. I had perhaps 3/4 the volume of worms that was in the permanent home in in roughly half the drawers at any one time.

At that point i got tired of the experiment and stopped counting beetles and worms. The worms were turning into beetles so fast there was no point in keeping the numbers down to 50. I found it worked both ways equally well, just increase the feed and space if you want more worms, and the beetles increase by themselves no matter what method you use. Besides by that time i was so very sick of seeing meal-worms in my sleep.

After the beetles started getting out of those shallow drawers they all went into a under the bed container and i only bother with them when i need to feed out the worms or do a little worm bin maintenance.

I never did put mine in a fish tank because i had been warned about the need for tape. Glad to hear that was wrong too.

Great looking worms by the way.