Mealworms turning into beetles.

Don't ever let me loose in Petsmart (or any pet store for that matter) with a store credit. :P

I tend to feed my mealworms things I normally buy for myself anyway (I eat my weight in oatmeal, I swear) so it is no added expense to feed the mealworms. (so far anyway. I only have a small colony going) Oatmeal, cornflakes, and bran flakes (enough for a decent sized colony) shouldn't cost you any more than $10 per month and if you normally keep fresh veggies around, just give them the scraps. (broccoli stems, carrot tops, potato peelings) Around here, its over $2 for 50 mealworms. My single leo puts away at least 10 a day at minimum. That's at least $2-4 a week on feeders for her. It is a lot cheaper to breed my own.

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

Don't ever let me loose in Petsmart (or any pet store for that matter) with a store credit. :P

I tend to feed my mealworms things I normally buy for myself anyway (I eat my weight in oatmeal, I swear) so it is no added expense to feed the mealworms. (so far anyway. I only have a small colony going) Oatmeal, cornflakes, and bran flakes (enough for a decent sized colony) shouldn't cost you any more than $10 per month and if you normally keep fresh veggies around, just give them the scraps. (broccoli stems, carrot tops, potato peelings) Around here, its over $2 for 50 mealworms. My single leo puts away at least 10 a day at minimum. That's at least $2-4 a week on feeders for her. It is a lot cheaper to breed my own.

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I would go crazy with the store credit lol. I would most likely need one of those children leashes to keep me from running everywhere lol!

I hope to start out with a pretty good sized colony too. I have only 3 mealworms left, and one of them is in it's cocoon about to be an adult pretty soon here. I will try to get one more mealworm to at least grow but if it does not in the next week then I will just try to breed the two I already have.

It has taken almost a month for my container of 50 mealworms to turn into almost 12 beetles and 10 pupa (got two beetles today :) ). So I would go out and get a few containers of mealworms to start with. I hope to get another container or two next week since I'm running out of mealworms already (I've been feeding mostly crickets so that I can get as many pupa as possible (got 5 today!)

A single female will lay tons of eggs, but it takes a long time for these eggs to become the correct sized mealworm for feeding. I believe that mealworms stay worms for 8-10 weeks, if I remember right. Ok, let me see. This is what I remember as far as stages.

1-2 weeks - Egg
8-10 weeks - Larva (mealworm)
1-2 weeks - Pupa
2-4 weeks - Adult Beetle (I could be mistaken on this one)

I could be wront, but that is what I remember. I'm going to go on google to see if I can find out if I'm right.

Well I can't find the page I was looking for, but in general, that is what you can expect. Though my pupa tend to become beetles far faster than what I normally am used to. During my last colony, it took 1-2 weeks for a pupa to become a beetle. Right now, my pupa are becoming beetles in about 4-5 days, sometimes less. When I looked it up, it said that pupa can turn into beetles anywhere from 3 to 30 days, depending on environmental factors, so if you want your pupa to become beetles faster, I'd put them in a warm spot. It also says that a female beetle can lay up to 500 eggs!

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

Well I can't find the page I was looking for, but in general, that is what you can expect. Though my pupa tend to become beetles far faster than what I normally am used to. During my last colony, it took 1-2 weeks for a pupa to become a beetle. Right now, my pupa are becoming beetles in about 4-5 days, sometimes less. When I looked it up, it said that pupa can turn into beetles anywhere from 3 to 30 days, depending on environmental factors, so if you want your pupa to become beetles faster, I'd put them in a warm spot. It also says that a female beetle can lay up to 500 eggs!

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Wow this will be some awesome "project" for me to do. And besides that, this will be the first thing I have ever bred lol. I hoped for ball pythons to be the first thing I bred, but I guess not :]

Haha, mealworms were my first too. But snakes come in more cool colors than darkling beetles do.

Good luck with the mealworm breeding. :D Keep us updated on your progress.

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

Haha, mealworms were my first too. But snakes come in more cool colors than darkling beetles do.

Good luck with the mealworm breeding. :D Keep us updated on your progress.

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Definitely will, thanks for helping me out too:D

No problem. :D

Well I am trying to breed superworms right now and I have 11 pupae right now waiting to emerge but I think there are almost the same thing just that you don't put superworms in the fridge like you would with mealworms. The food and bedding I use is just what I get when they come in and luckily I had bought so many of these in the past I was able to fill up a whole container. I will post pics later.