clarification?

[ordinaryoddity]

a while back i started a mealworm colony. after i ran out of adult mealworms, i went to crickets for a while to wait for the beetle's to lay eggs and hatch baby mealies. of course, i started getting frustrated with crickets, so at the daytona show i picked up 500 'giants'. i remember reading that giants have some sort of grown hormone that makes the sterile and not pupate... BUT since ive got them ive probably had about 20 turn into pupae... i know they're not supers, so im just confused about whats going on. will they not turn into beetles? or will they turn into beetles and not lay eggs? ...just a little curious...

thanks
andrew

 

[acpart]

Maybe the vendor meant they were big mealworms, not the hormonally treated "giants".

Aliza

 

[ordinaryoddity]

no... i got them from the armstrong table, so im pretty sure they know what they're talking about... when i asked if they had mealworms the guy there said "no, we're all out, we only have the giants left, which you know are hormonally treated" blah blah blah...

so i dunno.

 

[Baoh]

Perhaps nature found a way.

 

[ordinaryoddity]

lol, thatd be pretty cool...

i have over 50 pupae now and they dont seem to be dying off, soooo...

 

[nats]

Now that I have a zillion pupae and am ready to breed mealies, both my leos
have stopped eating them!! :main_no:

 

[ordinaryoddity]

all right... now im starting to get giant beetles from my giant pupae...

should i even bother keeping them and seeing if they'll make some babies?


help? lol

 

[rhino43grr]

i don't see why they wouldn't lay eggs, the hormonally treated mealworms are supposed to not pupate. you're sure they aren't superworms?

 

[shadowx362]

I am pretty sure those worms are Giants. I have bought giants that pupated and I got Giant beetles. I mixed them in along with my normals and got baby mealies so I dont know if they were productive or if it was the normals that layed the eggs.

 

[ordinaryoddity]

im definitely sure they arent supers

i think ill do a little experiment and separate the new giant beetles and see what happens... hopefully it wont be a waste of time

itll be fun to see what happens anyway