My mealworm colony

[piranhaking]

For those who may be following this thread, just thought I'd let you know my first tub of babies is getting large enough that I'm expecting pupae just about any time now. I'll be putting the beetles in a different tub from the beetles I have now, so that I will know when my colony is ENTIRELY my own with no store bought specimens. That may sound corny to some, but its kinda an accomplishment to me.

[piranhaking]

I got my first pupae out of my worms today. I'm close to my first full life cycle.

[jfreels]

Nice. I have about 300 cooking at the moment. Ever since the last full moon, they have been pupating like crazy.

[piranhaking]

First beetle finally emerged

[piranhaking]

I'm having a problem with a LOT of partial emerging, where the back half of the body keeps looking like a pupae. Those dont seem to live long. Some of the pupae are very small, those tend to be the ones that dont emerge right. The larger ones seem to emerge fine. Any ideas what could be causing that?

On a better note, I only have about 4 beetles left from my store bought worms, and once they die off my colony will be all my own hatch .

[jfreels]

I've attributed that to generations of inbreeding. Being that I raised and grew generations of worms, I couldn't attribute it to humidity or anything else. Each generation of beetle seemed to get smaller.

I don't have any other answer for you. I was told by another breeder that I need to "get new blood" into the colony every three generations. As far as I have witnessed so far, supers don't suffer from this in the same way. I am on my fourth generation of supers and they all come out big and breed good. Though I have seen that they aren't living as long. I just had a huge die off. Over 70% of the beetle colony almost overnight. I was told by one breeder that they sense the time of year. Not sure how they do that when they are kept in a 80-82 degree room year round lol

[piranhaking]

That was my first thought, but this is my first generation if worms. I guess the supply I started with may have been inbred too much.

That raises another question, is there any way to be sure I'm not getting worms from the same colony when I buy new ones? I got them from petco. I would think the same store gets from the same place. Would I be better to get them from another chain a ways from here? I travel about 4 hours away a couple times a month, I could pick some up out there if it would be worth while.

[jfreels]

I would get them online if possible. I have not spent too much time figuring this one out since I scratched my mealworm project. If you're willing to do supers, which you're doing, I'd just stick with those