Mealworm farming

[beverly evans]

Quote:

Okay, so if they are not eggs, they are turds?? What did you see that made you sure they were not eggs? Enlighten us, please. : )

Here is a picture of a T. molitor egg next to a rolled oat that hannakat (the OP for this thread) observed being laid:

That definitely is shaped like an egg, and she saw it being laid! So, no question, but those squarish little things then are poop?? And like someone said, the reddish ones are from their eating carrots.

 

[beverly evans]

new pics of the bins.






i set the DVD on one plate to help show the dimension of the bins. i pulled all the old vegetable matter and replaced the carrots. the 5000 worms have all changed to pupea and beetles i have not seen any baby worms yet but will look in a few days.

I think I counted four different bins. You said you hadn't seen any baby worms yet. Does this mean all your bins are in the same stage of development and not separate? What are the white paper plates for? I'm learning from you and am curious. : )

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

This is what a highly productive colony with all life stages should look like. Granted, at the point these pictures were taken the colony was due for a couple of inches of bran, but the surface would look much like this within a day or so of adding it. Keep in mind that they will spend most of their time in the top two inches anyway.

 

[kubotafoot]

They are all different colors, just like grains of sand! I guess due to different ages and/or stages of development?

Are you saying "they" are eggs? I thought we decided it was manure with a few eggs, and yes, manure would be different colors (just as with humans) due to different foods eaten. Please, please a knowledgeable old time worm farmer, step in and set us straight on manure verses eggs so we don't "throw the baby out with the bath water." (In other words, so we don't toss out valuable eggs when we think it is frass, or save it all when it really is frass.

 

[jenneverett]

I think I counted four different bins. You said you hadn't seen any baby worms yet. Does this mean all your bins are in the same stage of development and not separate? What are the white paper plates for? I'm learning from you and am curious. : )

There are only the two bins at this time... notice that the plates and tube halves are the same in all the pics... one bin with plates and the other with tubes.
I took plates and cut just half way up the slant so it gives the bugs a bit of room underneath but not so roomy they didn't like it.

in this picture i circled most of the uniformly round and white balls and if you look around the photo you can tell they are different than the odd shaped bits. then here and there you see a longer "turd" that is what we would easily think of as fecal matter. i do use glasses to read and my macro on the camera can only get them so big for me but the white round balls are so uniform in size and almost in color that i cant believe they are not the real eggs.

i did start separating them as they pupated but quickly determined that i just don't have the time to spend going through them every day. i started with 5000 and they were all worms at the day of delivery... then within a few days i was finding pupae and separated them out to bin #2 then as i got the chance i moved more and more... when i felt that bin 2 had more than 1000 pupae i stopped and have just been letting them do their stuff.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quote:
I'm not sure I saw eggs in any of the pictures other than the one of the single egg taken by hannakat. This may in part be due to the pics and my screen, these tiny things are really tough to photograph. However, I can tell you that arthropod eggs are amazingly uniform in shape and size within a given species, with very little variability in any measure. They will also be elliptical shaped like hannakat's egg. Even if we took and examined eggs from all the members on this thread with their different rearing techniques, they'd all be quite uniform. Having said all that, I'm not sure how important recognizing the eggs is to raising mealworms--although being able to recognize eggs is cool! (if I'm missing something that pertains to what you're doing, let me know). For a period of time I worried about egg loss when I removed old dried vegetable matter or when I removed the bottom layer of substrate, so I put the removed material in a bucket and watched and waited to see how many grew from it. It turned out that so few were produced that I stopped bothering with it. A single beetle could lay ever so much more than emerged from the waste so it made more sense to me to focus on the well being of the colony rather than on stragglers that I missed.

 

[kubotafoot]

At last! Thanks for the information. I trust you to know the in and out of meal worm rearing as you haven't led me wrong yet.

 

[chickensfinally]

I have beetles!!!! I have beetles!!!! Yay! I also have more pupa and large mealies that will pupate soon I'm sure. I'm so excited, I just got these (1000) from Petco about a week ago (because i couldnt wait to have them shipped to me) and it has been warm here, and I've got them in my son's room since it's the warmest in the house, don't know the temp, but HOT!! He's not in it currently so u don't have to feel bad for him . [Doing the happy beetle dance]

 

[subhanalah]

I have beetles!!!! I have beetles!!!! Yay! I also have more pupa and large mealies that will pupate soon I'm sure. I'm so excited, I just got these (1000) from Petco about a week ago (because i couldnt wait to have them shipped to me) and it has been warm here, and I've got them in my son's room since it's the warmest in the house, don't know the temp, but HOT!! He's not in it currently so u don't have to feel bad for him . [Doing the happy beetle dance]

this may just be too much to ask but can we please see this happy beetle dance.

 

[chickensfinally]

this may just be too much to ask but can we please see this happy beetle dance.

Heehee, it looks a lot like The Funky Chicken!! Lol!