# Mealworm beetle colony help!



## Reptiles666 (Jan 20, 2013)

I recently got a mealworms beetle colony, about 20-30 beetles and a few pupae, I was wondering what are some easy and convenient way of getting the baby mealies separated when time comes? Is there any special ways I can set up the container ? I have a small one and a very big one if more room is better. Also my cricket container is a big tubaware box with pvc pipes going through the sides for the crickets to go in and out of and i can just pull the pvc pipe out to get the crickets but my question is what do i need inside the crickets enclosure? how often should i change the carrots in the dish and where can you buy the water gels for crickets? and someone mentioned something about using vitamin powder and to sprinkle it on the bottom of the crickets container? If anyone could help that would be great.


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## HowseR21 (Nov 5, 2011)

Vitamin supplements are readily Avaliable through most pet stores and certainly online  same with the aqua crystals which really are a god send as they can't drown in it, but they can drink it 

In terms of the mealworm farm I would sieve each layer to attempt to collect the newly emerged larvae/eggs. Keep what's left after sieving because even though it's been sieved, there may be hundreds of eggs in there still for all you know.

Put the food in there but I would remove it every 2-3 days to avoid rot and mould, I also heard that now and again you can throw in a pre killed cricket or similiar to provide them with some protein.

My mealworm farm was finally established a couple of months ago but I fell out of interest in breeding them for food considering all my pets get them extremely rarely, so it would work out a lot cheaper and with a lot less hassle just to buy a tub now and then.

Having said that I know people on here that have raised mealworms for years and literally can feed their geckos/tarantulas etc for free all year.
So it's definitely worth while providing you'll have a use for them once they get going :2thumb:

Hope this helps


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## Jill Glover (Jun 17, 2010)

Reptiles666 said:


> I recently got a mealworms beetle colony, about 20-30 beetles and a few pupae, I was wondering what are some easy and convenient way of getting the baby mealies separated when time comes? Is there any special ways I can set up the container ? I have a small one and a very big one if more room is better. Also my cricket container is a big tubaware box with pvc pipes going through the sides for the crickets to go in and out of and i can just pull the pvc pipe out to get the crickets but my question is what do i need inside the crickets enclosure? how often should i change the carrots in the dish and where can you buy the water gels for crickets? and someone mentioned something about using vitamin powder and to sprinkle it on the bottom of the crickets container? If anyone could help that would be great.


I have the same advice - sieve the substrate and the eggs/babies with go though the sieve. But save the leftover substrate in case there are some that havent been caught. Then just let the beetles start again. I have been breeding for 3 years now with sucess but now want to go bigger. I love sifting through for pupae and love feeding the birds with the mealies. The robin just loves them and when the birds have babies there is loads of activity in the garden. Love it


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## MartynsMealworms (Sep 5, 2013)

Separating the beetles from the eggs/baby mealworms is indeed the greatest challenge for a professional breeder if you are looking to maximize production. Creating a homemade sifter which fits nicely on your containers it perhaps the best option, but it's still time consuming if you have many of containers to do. I'm looking into experimenting with different materials to encourage the beetles to pay eyes on them mostly, removing and replacing every 1-2 days.


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## vukic (Apr 9, 2010)

I've been wondering this? I just run through with tweezers to get what I need and when I retire substrate.. It goes in a separate container and chuck the odd bit of carrot in... Always seems like there are loads in there.. After months of going through it.. Lol.. Thinking of using a "sieve" that's not too fine as the "breeding container" so just the eggs n baby mealies fall through to another container to grow on.. 

Tiger

Sent from my LT18i using Tapatalk 2


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## Dragon Farm (Aug 7, 2009)

MartynsMealworms said:


> Separating the beetles from the eggs/baby mealworms is indeed the greatest challenge for a professional breeder if you are looking to maximize production. Creating a homemade sifter which fits nicely on your containers it perhaps the best option, but it's still time consuming if you have many of containers to do. I'm looking into experimenting with different materials to encourage the beetles to pay eyes on them mostly, removing and replacing every 1-2 days.


But surely it is quite easy to find a cereal substrate that is fine enough to go through a sieve that at the same time will not allow the beetles through ? How is that a challenge ? Sieving the box with the adult beetles once a week takes only around 1 minute. 

Is there something I am missing ?


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## MartynsMealworms (Sep 5, 2013)

Probably not missing anything, other than multiplication of the task. One box is fine, but when you get into 15-20 large boxes full of beetles, it can take a bit of time!! If you can shift through 90 litres of bran in quick time, I'd be impressed!


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## mjp1pink (May 3, 2008)

*Re Mealworm Breeding*

Hi

I used to breed a lot of mealworms and I used the following method which I found really easy.

Each week I would load a 5 litre rub with bran and beetles / pupae that I generated by simply leaving a tub of worms to pupate. Used to go for about 50 beetles per rub. Each rub was half filled with bran and I added a small half potato for moisture.

I changed the potato halfway through the week.

It takes about 3-4 weeks until you can see the bran moving with tiny mealworms. Once you have a tub at this stage you can start the cycle of recovering the worms. I sifted the beetles from the bran using a collander that I found in a shop that had perfect sized holes to seperate the bran from the beetles. I then put the bran, eggs and micro worms in another rub and the beetles were recycled into another breeding box.

You can buy aluminium mesh cheaply off ebay in various sizes and make a simple sieve if you cannot find anything suitable.

Each week i used a potato peeler to strip down a carrot and I laid the strips of carrot on top of the bran in the growing boxes and topped up the bran is neccessary.

Once the worms were big enough to feed I would seperate them from the dusty crap by seiving them with a flour sieve, add some more carrot strips to get them nice and juicy and the following day feed the geckos.

The whole process used to take me about 1-hour (tops) once a week and about 5 minutes to change the potatoes one evening. I generated sufficient mealworms to feed my Leopard Gecko breeders (about 15 animals) and all of the offspring that I produced each year (about 40 babies).

I purchased the bran from Asda (Jordans Wheat Bran) as it was about 70p per bag (2 bags per week). I found it was easier than buying in bulk as I had issues with bulk bran becoming damp and getting other critters in it. The potatoes and carrots were recovered from the weekly shop.

In summary I supported my Leopard Gecko breeding each year for about £2 per week and about an hours worth of effort. Once you get organised it's not that difficult.

Regards

Mark


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## MartynsMealworms (Sep 5, 2013)

Thanks Mark, I'm also using a collander at the moment to separate the beetles- it's the best tool I've found so far for the job. However, I'm just aiming for something even more efficient when I get ALOT of beetle tubs. I suspect some commercial breeders don't bother with this process and rely on mass production to supply demand.


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## mjp1pink (May 3, 2008)

*Re Mealworm Breeding*

Hi

There are some videos of a commercial insect breeder on you tube and they use a mechanical sieve that vibrates and is about the size of a small bath. We use that sort of thing in the food industry so I assume that a smaller version would be available but you will probably not get a lot of change out of a lot of money 

You could potentially make something bigger with some aluminium mesh and a tub of your choice and manually sieve them out.

The other idea that i found on the net was that someone had lined the bottom of the breeder bins with a fine mesh and the baby worms simply fell through into a tub underneath that was set up to catch them. It looked a good idea but I never tried it.

Mark


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## MartynsMealworms (Sep 5, 2013)

Can't seem to find the videos, can you post what the keywords to search for in youtube? I'm always hunting on youtube for commerical mealworm farms, but always find the "one tub" home videos. Although, I saw the Dirty Jobs episode on a mealworm farm--that's what got me interested in the venture!


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## vukic (Apr 9, 2010)

MartynsMealworms said:


> Can't seem to find the videos, can you post what the keywords to search for in youtube? I'm always hunting on youtube for commerical mealworm farms, but always find the "one tub" home videos. Although, I saw the Dirty Jobs episode on a mealworm farm--that's what got me interested in the venture!


Dirty jobs?? Sounds interesting.. 

Tiger

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## mjp1pink (May 3, 2008)

*re Mealworm Breeding*

Hi

There are some good episodes in the Dirty Jobs series. I think the sieve is in one of the Cricket Farm videos. The videos I was thinking about were promotional videos showing the inside of an American insect farm, I cant seem to find it though.

Looking at some the videos it looks like they use home made sieves / riddles with different size meshes to sieve the worms and beetles. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.

This is a video of the mesh bottomed tub
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x5lEN2jqc4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

This video is bit more industrial with regards to sieving (earthrise six legged meat)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDJd41nAANk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Maggot farm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPU5DE0Z_TA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Regards

Mark


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