Breeding Mealworms

[Tiaris]

Just wanting to pick the brains of those with extensive mealworm breeding experience as to best "stock management" of the colonies for efficient production. I've recently set up plenty of plastic box colonies & am currently setting up new ones with 120-130 pupae in each to have egg-laying beetle colonies. I'm interested in how you people manage them from there on. I've heard of some people sieving out the eggs from beetle colonies on a regular basis. Is this to stop the beetles eating some of the eggs/young? Any other hints gratefully appreciated.

[GregH]

I’m not a big producer but I've got enough for my meagre needs and I go out of my way to make life as easy as possible. The latter is the key you’re after. Sieving out the adults allows you to synchronise the generations so that you know when each culture/batch will reach maturity and most especially it lets you know when it’s time to replace your layers. Assuming that you have an abundant supply of food and water the development time of insects is largely under the control of the temperature you hold your cultures at. Here in the Philippines I do just fine with ambient (diurnal variation of 18-28 oC year round) but the further away from the coast and further towards the poles you go the more you may need to invest in an incubator so that you take the guess work out of the business. The higher the density of the beetles on the laying media the less time you need to leave tem on and the more synchronous you batches will become. I wouldn’t leave them on for more than two weeks or you get too much of a mixture of sizes and may need to use multiple sieves to separate the various instars.

I’ve not found cannibalism or egg eating to be a problem when they are supplied with adequate food and water (usually carrot or sweetpotato)