What's wrong with my mealworms?

[jlwquilter]

Sweet potatoes - I’ll try them too! I get alot of my veg for the chickens, red wigglers and the mealies from a vegetable stand. Their too old or damaged to sell stuff. It’s random what I’ll get every week but it’s been great - saves me a ton of money.

I started with 5,000 mealies which is a good amount but not crazy yet so I can still get by with working the sifters and some hand picking. I’m just getting beetles now as I said and haven’t had a bin totally mixed with every stage yet. I got out most of the pupae when I did the sift a few days ago. I’m getting handfuls every hour (!) now and hand pick out a bunch every time I walk by the bins. I’m not going to be able to keep up doing that though. I’m going to have to sift again very soon to get most of the pupae out in one shot. I’m aware of space coast mealworms and his sifters and sorters. I’m not wanting to fork out the money on them just yet but think I’ll have to - at least the pupae sifter - soon. If I can keep on top of taking the pupae out of the mealie bins that’ll make everything else easier.

I haven’t had a problem with the pupae staying on the bridge. The beetles aren’t falling off very fast though once they hatch. TBH I think I expect them too faster than they really are ready to - I’m being impatient.

I like your idea of a solution to separating beetles from pupae. It’s worth a try. If you keep the food/water sources plentiful and away from where the pupae are I think it may work. Let me know! I’m running out of bridge space again - I already have 2 set up in the beetle bin. And with more pupae every hour…. I think I’m going to set up another bin (it’s ready to go with the screen mesh top insert) for pupae and keep combing the hatching beetles into one bin so there’s plenty to meet and mate.

 

[jlwquilter]

I’ve used the egg carton method to sort out mealies. ‘Sweep’ wasn’t the best word - I scooped up handfuls (I used a yogurt container) and poured it over the egg crate. Then I picked up the crate and turned it gently over so loose stuff fell back into the original bin. Then I moved the carton with the mealies clinging to it to the new bin and knocked them off. It did work fine. However I felt that using a flat surface instead of an egg crate would work better as the mealies get into the nooks of the carton and I had to kind pick them out a lot. With a flat surface it would be a clean sweep of the hand to knock them all off. I didn’t pursue this idea as my sifters arrived and I used them going forward. I was thinking however that construction paper glued to a piece of stiff cardboard or even roughing up the surface of the cardboard itself enough that the mealies can grab on might work. I have not personally used the carton idea on beetles but the YouTube guy did. He used it more for sorting out dead beetles from live beetles rather than beetles from mealies and sorting dead mealies from live mealies out of bedding.

 

[jlwquilter]

The 1/8” strainer isn’t fine enough to separate frass from partially eaten bedding. The 1/20” isn’t either. It’s has to 1/30” or close to it. I sifted the bedding/frass after removing all the veg and mealies with the 1/20”. I thought ‘good enough’. Then I sifted it again thru the grease splatter screen and only about half went thru it - the half that was true frass. The left behind on the splatter screen was really bedding and I put that back into the bins. Since I have to pay for bedding (right now, I’m working on how to reduce buying it) it’s a big savings to reuse bedding instead of essentially throwing it away. Composting it is way better than the garbage can but putting it back into the bins for the mealies to continue to eat and process is way better than the compost pile. And for the cost of a dollar store grease splatter screen it’s worth it to me. I simply wasn’t going to pay $35(!!) for a 1/30” sifter.

That gallon of ‘frass’ you got using the 1/8” screen is probably a 1/4 gallon of pure frass and the rest is usable/reusable bedding. It’s something for you to consider if it’s worth that further sifting.

 

[jlwquilter]

I too was super concerned with the mold thing. I’ve relaxed on that a tiny bit. Food doesn’t seem to be going moldy as fast as it did the first few days. I think it may be because I used up the frozen carrots and am now using fresh carrots … so they last longer? I don’t know.
I did put in a mango seed with flesh still attached and I expected that to mold quickly but every time I checked it it had lots of mealies on it and I figured they knew best . It’s been in the bin many days and it’s picked clean of flesh. I actually need to take it out. I’m glad you mentioned the banana peels. We have banana plants and get lots of peels . I feed them to my red wigglers, ‘juice’ them for compost liquid and now I can add some to the mealie bins! Perfect!

 

[jlwquilter]

Oh I see I mixed that up. You got a gallon of mealies and beetles to keep and 2 gallons of frass with eggs mixed in. I don’t have egg experience yet so don’t know how they’ll work with the frass sifter screen (the grease splatter screen). But I stand by thinking a lot of that ‘frass’ was really not fully processed bedding and could have been reused. My hope is that many of the eggs will not go thru the frass sifter and can be saved for hatching.

 

[jlwquilter]

No disrespect to space coast but I think the beetle self sorting set up should be fairly easy to make oneself. What I wonder is how eager the beetles are to make the climb to begin with. What’s drawing them up the incline?

 

[jlwquilter]

Here’s a video I made about sifting frass and why the smallest mesh screen you can use gives a better result. Also a few ideas on how to sift and where you can find a cheap frass sifting screen

 

[jlwquilter]

Here’s the link to space coast mealworms using egg crates to move/separate out live from dead mealworms. Works for beetles too although I haven’t don’t that yet.

FYI you’ll notice his bin has little to no substrate in it. That may be key I think. I used this method when I got my purchased mealworms which did not come with substrate- just a wad of dry newspaper. Worked a charm.

The other night I tried using the egg carton in my bin that has the mealies in their bedding and the egg crates didn’t work at all! Or maybe they weren’t hungry or stressed and didn’t feel the need to latch on to the cartons…? Don’t know. But is was a bust