Got Beetles, Now What???

[nellie]

A while ago I bought 1000 meal worms for my leos. A bunch of them turned into beetles (I'm delighted!).
But what do I do with them now? Is there something special that I have to do with them to get more meal worms or do I just leave them alone? I thought I read somewhere that I should have a peice of wood in there for them to lay eggs on. True? Is it still a good idea to change the substrate or am I going to be throwing away eggs?
Anyone have any knowledge on breeding meal worms?
Help would be appreciated!
Thanks!
~Nellie

[Bartman]

ive never bred them but ive read a lot on breeding them..It said you are supposed to put a piece of cardboard box. They will lay eggs inbetween the paper. You also need to keep them very well fed and have food offered all the time..like greens and thing slike that..carrots is a good one. Other than that they do a lot on there own i would think and i wouldnt suggest switching the substrate because than you might throw out some eggs and it would be a waste. good luck wit the eggs

[Neo]

my friend aka Mr. Gray in this forum breeds them.. for substrate he uses mealworm gutload itself.. he can tell u bout it better than me cause well he's the one doing it lol

[Pia]

Keep the substrate, chances are they will have laid at least some eggs in it. I use bran (the kind you make muffins with) for a substrate, I buy it in bulk at the grocery store. I don't use anything for them to lay their eggs on. For moisture and extra nutrition I was just putting in slices of potato, but have also started using carrots, brocoli, and sometimes baby spinach leaves. I tried adding bok choy (it's a little like lettuce) but had a problem with moisture build up which leads to mold. Make sure there is lots of ventilation; either a screen top or not top at all on the container. You won't have a problem with anything getting out as long as the container is deep enough, mine is 6 or 7 inches deep with about 2 inches of substrate. I put in fresh veggies every second day. I've read that the eggs hatch in about a week, but I didn't notice any worms for almost 4 wks, either they were too small or I wasn't looking close enought :-). I use the same substrate and veggies to raise the worms. There are variations on what you can use for substrate and the types of veggies, etc. but this is what has worked for me. Hope it helps. Have fun :-)

[Mr. Gray]

Haha, yeah, i "raise" them, though i havn't gotton far enough along to have actually yielded results. I basically did the same as you did, i bought a bunch of mealies and let them turn into beatles. From my experience, this is the best thing to do:

1) get a nice sized plastic container of some sort to keep the main colony in. For substrate, i use oatmeal mixed with corn meal, various grains, and i make sure they are in small bits (blender ) and i dumped all the mealworms i bout in there. I keep them in a nice sized "kritter keeper" which i like a lot. Once a day (in the evening) i put in sliced up carrots. The more you slice them up, the more will get used, since big chunks tend to dry out faster than they can be eaten. This gives the little buggers moisture and whatnot. You can slice an apples into maybe 16ths and put those in, just be sure to take them out before they get moldy. I also keep it nice and warm, maybe 85 degrees or so? I don't really pay attention to how warm, i just keep em near a heat lamp.
2) At the point where you start noticing little "aliens" which are the cacoon-pod things they change into before becoming beatles, you need another small container. I have noticed that right before the mealworms become 'aliens' they slow down with the eating process etc. They just sort of sit and don't move much, and get nice and fat looking. They will then shed into 'aliens.' Now unfortunatly, it seems that any mealworm that is still hungry and eating will eat these 'aliens' since they are utterly helpless and stationary. This is quite bad, get into the habit of looking through the colony before feeding them and get any 'aliens' out, and put them in the smaller container. At this point, i don't know what the best thing to do with it is. I keep a layer of oatmeal mix in the container so when the beatles come out they can eat something if they want. I also would put in a few pieces of carrot. After maybe a week or two they turn into beatles, which look tan or brownish color. Wait for them to turn black and then put them into the original colony They will start making babies and stuff. I've had some pretty deformed looking beatles, and i don't think they live for a very long time. When the beatles die the feeding mealworms will eat them, lol. vicious cycle, i know. I am currently waiting to see babies from my original colony, but it just so happens that when i cleaned out one of my tanks, i found a couple of mealies had escaped and turned into beatles inbetween the sheets of newspaper. I put them in with the other colony, and at the bottom of the tank on the glass was hundreds of little baby mealworms. I put them in the original colony as well, so hopefully they will be noticable at some point . Hope this helps

[Amiechann]

I basically leave them in a quite place with 1 inch of oatmeal in an uncovered sterilite sweater box. I put a slice of potato in there for them to eat once a week, and they pretty much take care of themselves.. i've got mealies running out of my ears!

[Zoe]

This is what I did: Once the mealworms were turning to beetles, I put them on a mix of flaked baby food, fish food and corn startch, as well as bug gut load. I have them a piece of potato or apple or carrot to munch on, and some pieces of egg box. This is in a big ice cream tub thing, but anything will do. They don't fly do they don't need a lid.
They breed and lay on their own. After a month, I moved the still living beetles to another tub along with new beetles, chucked the dead beetles and left the tub and substrate for another month, by which time I could go through it and find the mealworms. Then I put the mealworms back for another month. I never chuck the substrate, because mealies don't stink and there may be missed mealworms or eggs in it.

Zoe

[jay76]

I've got mine in oat bran, there's tiny little mealies everywhere... just feed 'em once in a while and they should do the rest. I haven't taken the cocoons out, but there's still beetles and worms in there

[Zoe]

Oat bran works too, but I like stuff that pases through one of those little metal mesh cup dealiers. Does that make sense? So the substrate falls through and the mealies stay in?

Zoe

[jay76]

Makes perfect sense, Zoe