Mealworms turning into beetles.

Ok so I'm going to start to breed mealworms to have some for my Giant leo (if she eats..) so I don't have to keep on buying more and more (not that expensive, but this way I won't even have to spend money). Today after cleaning out the water dishes and doing some cage mainenance, I looked into the mealworm container and saw a beetle. So I thought, "I'm just going to breed my own and see what happens." so there are a few things I want to know on how to keep and breed these beetles. There is also another mealworm in it's cocoon and about to turn into a beetle so if they are the opposite sex which I cannot really tell (I'll just see what happens) I'll breed them.

1- How do I set up their home? Right now I have the one beetle in a small plastic container with some paper towels in it just for now.

2- What do these beetles eat?

3- Do I just put the beetles together and expect to see eggs or is there a certain way I am supposed to breed them?

Thanks for your answers!

You can put them on oats, with a little lettuce and carrot for moisture. Their food doubles as their bedding. I would put something in there for the beetles to hide under also.

I swear that Google is your friend..I wouldn't tell a lie...

http://www.wormman.com/mealworm_breeding.cfm

in my opinion, its better to buy like 500 or 1000 online than breed. i stopped breeding cuz its just not worth it. i buy 500 and put em in the fridge.my freind sells 500 for 8$ shipped on zazzreptiles.webs.com

For right now I put an inch of oatmeal for the mealworms' bedding and I also put some lettuce in there for them to snack on. I put like half an inch of oatmeal in the beetle's container with some lettuce and as I can see right now one mealworm is snacking on the lettuce and the beetle is doing the same.

The female beetles tend to be a bit bigger than the males. I just use oatmeal for now because I haven't had a chance to go grocery shopping yet. A few years ago I had started a mealworm colony that got off to a good start. Here was the mix I used as far as food.

Oatmeal
Bran Flakes
Corn Flakes
Veggies (potato, carrot, lettuce)

Warm temperatures will produce more pupa and therefore more beetles. I keep my animal room at 75+ and I bought a container of 50 medium mealworms less than a month ago. I now have 12+ pupa and almost a dozen beetles. Mealworms do take a while to get started though. You can look up the exact time period they spend in each stage, but I know they spend several weeks in the larval stage and eggs take up to 2 weeks to hatch.

If you get beetles, put them in some food and leave them alone. If there are males and females, they will breed. Do not throw away the food/bedding! Eggs and very very small larva are living in the food. At first you won't be able to see the worms, they are very tiny. I just dump this food into the worm drawer and let them grow up with the other worms.

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

The female beetles tend to be a bit bigger than the males. I just use oatmeal for now because I haven't had a chance to go grocery shopping yet. A few years ago I had started a mealworm colony that got off to a good start. Here was the mix I used as far as food.

Oatmeal
Bran Flakes
Corn Flakes
Veggies (potato, carrot, lettuce)

Warm temperatures will produce more pupa and therefore more beetles. I keep my animal room at 75+ and I bought a container of 50 medium mealworms less than a month ago. I now have 12+ pupa and almost a dozen beetles. Mealworms do take a while to get started though. You can look up the exact time period they spend in each stage, but I know they spend several weeks in the larval stage and eggs take up to 2 weeks to hatch.

If you get beetles, put them in some food and leave them alone. If there are males and females, they will breed. Do not throw away the food/bedding! Eggs and very very small larva are living in the food. At first you won't be able to see the worms, they are very tiny. I just dump this food into the worm drawer and let them grow up with the other worms.

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Thanks so much that is very helpful. I'm using oatmeal for now and it seems to be working quite well. For now I'm just feeding them lettuce since that's the only thing I can find in my house that they like to snack on. Are any fruits good for them like grapes, blue berries, strawberries, etc.?

I have used fruit before (when no veggies could be found) and they were things like apple and pear. You want to avoid something with a lot of moisture (nothing like mango or something that literally drips juice) because this will spoil the oatmeal and you'll have to throw it out.

Veggies just provide moisture. I have used broccoli stem too, but many people like to use carrot or potato.

It is a waiting game though. It took me months to get even two containers of itty bitty mealworms. Of course I started off with only a few mealworms (around 100-150). That was also in a cooler environment (70 degrees). The room I have them in now is at the very least 75 degrees, but can reach 80 during a hot day. I get about 3-5 pupa a day at this temperature range.

Now I understand that superworms are not the same as mealworms..however my boyfriend decided to breed his own superworms so he didn't have to keep spending money on feeders.

Make a long story short, within a few months two beetles produced literally thousands of superworms. We would give them away to friends and take them into the local pet shop to get RID OF THEM. We didn't even bother with store credit.

Feeding the superworms ended up costing waay more than just picking up feeders periodically.

If you don't have a large need for them, it may not be worth it.

Again, these were superworms and mealworms may not produce as many offspring. I don't rightly know...I'm not a fan of and don't care to know much about things with an exoskeleton.

Hmm, that gives me an idea.

Maybe I should breed tons of mealworms, get store credit from Petsmart, and buy all of the things I need for my snakes and everything. That would be a dream come true for me lol.

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.

Quote:

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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.