Breeding the worms

[minimoe80]

OK so I had a big Tim full of large mealworms. I let them do there thing and some of them died, but a lot of them turned into beatles. They have been beetles for a pretty long time now. However in the tin I have a whole bunch of oats.. So my question is how can I tell if there are eggs? or what ever the case may be. How can I tell if they have mated and laid the eggs for larva? I just see a ton of the beetles and a but load of the oats.. What do I do? lol

 

[fuzzylogix]

if they are mealies you pretty much just let them do their thing. i keep a small piece of egg crate in one corner of my bin for the beetles to congregate. as long as you keep them fed the beetles will lay eggs in the oats and babies will hatch. they will be very small and it will take a couple of months for you to start seeing large numbers.

 

[Dog Shrink]

Yeah you won't see the eggs. Do like fuzzy said, but don't clean out the frass or you'll lose all your eggs and teeney babies. If you DO need to clean out the frass, I'd put it in a seperate keeper with some fresh oats and food to see what develops.

 

[5HiddenLizards]

Be patient. They'll pop up. I keep a few of those fake plant leaves in the bin & the beetles lay their eggs on them.

 

[fl_orchidslave]

It takes a while to have an established worm colony. Patience! If you look for worms every day you won't see much change. As Shawn said, using egg crate pieces works very well. I give new bedding every 2-3 weeks and dump the hatching eggs in a sterlite 12" shallow 3-drawer box to let them grow up. They are very tiny and hard to see for a while but then they're all over the bedding. Be patient