What size are mealworms eggs?

[SteveMac]

I am setting up to breed mealworms and have bought a plastic drawer set. I now want to cut the bottom out of one drawer and fit mesh for the eggs to fall through. Having looked at fine mesh, I found a range of hole sizes and am wondering what size the eggs are so I can fit the best gauge mesh. Anyone who breeds them would have experience of the eggs and all I need is an idea of the size to get me up and running. All help appreciated.

 

[SteveMac]

I found this which may be useful to someone:

The life cycle of a mealworm starts as a tiny egg that the human eye can barely see. Think of it being the size of a grain of sand. And to make visibility even worse, the egg is usually mixed in with dirt or whatever substrate or waste the egg happens to be within. This egg will sit and do it’s time for around 4-5 weeks of growth until the mealworm is hatched as larva.

 

[PapaBear4]

Very, very tiny. I can't say for sure that I've ever actually seen one. We started with a batch of 50 large meal worms from the local pet store and put them in a box with some chick starter. One of my kids tended them pretty closely for a while, then got bored when the beetles started dying off. The box got stuck in a corner in my home office and was forgotten.
Three or four months later we "found" it and had a box squirming with meal worms! Some of them were already to the pupae stage. So we harvested most of the mature worms for the hens and now I've got another box full of beetles.

If my experience so far is any indicator, they're really easy to breed. At some point I think it'd be fun to get a rotation going so I could harvest a matured box every month.

Do you have a goal in mind or just experimenting?

 

[azygous]

Meal worm eggs are even smaller than sand grains, but you can see them with the naked eye if the adults lay the eggs on a flat surface such as a piece of newspaper or inside a discarded toilet paper roll. The eggs are about the same size as the period at the end of this sentence.

Allow me to give you a tip about that drawer file box. They are not secure. Eventually, the larvae will reach full size and will clump in corners of the drawer. They pile up, allowing the ones on top the pile to reach the top edge of the drawer sides.

If you contemplate meal worms at large in your house, or wherever you have the container, as a desirable outcome, by all means use the file box. This happened to me. The meal worms climbed out of the drawers and colonized the inside of the file box before entering the bigger world of my kitchen. It was great fun rounding them all up.

A better choice would be Sterilite shallow storage trays with lids. Adults also find ways to escape unless confined to containers with straight smooth sides and lids. They can learn to fly if they find themselves free for any extended period. This, too, I have experienced. Good times.