Grain Mites, your opinion

[shadowx362]

well over the past few weeks I have been noticing these grain mites on my meal worms colony and I wasn't too happy about it so I dont know if I should just throw them all out. I most likely will throw out about 8K of beetles and around a couple K of baby meal worms and eggs. I am so upset because it was my fault for adding flour. long story short I ran out of bedding and we had an old bag of tortilla flour laying around that i used for the bedding for two of my three meal worm bins. Now there is thousand of mites and it really is no stopping them. Luckily the meal worm bin I didn't use flower on has no traces of mites. I used baby chick food for that one. But what sucks is that the bin that has no mites has only about 300 beetles
That last couple of days it has been cooler and I have been keeping the bedding dry and all the mites are leaving (migrating) and they are making a MESS!! I see them camping out everywere and I am so disgusted, and that is the reason I am trying to throw them away now.

My question to you is how long should I wait between these meal worms and the next time I buy so I wont get infested again. I mean these littles things are everywhere in the garage and I simply cannot kill everysingle one of these bugs. I hear their lifespan is 17 days or so and eggs and the little"hibernating" ones can last longer and are almost impossible to kill. Any recommendations will be much appreciated
I am so pissed!

 

[shadowx362]

Ok I just dumped 2 of the bins in the "green" trashcan and sprayed it with some bug killer in hopes of stopping the mites from crawling out till the trash is picked up on Monday. I am still keeping hopes for the mealworm bin that has no mites. i cant see them on the plastic or under food and carats unlike the other two bins so hopefully its cleared. Oh well there goes money down the trash..

 

[gothra]

I'm sorry that you've got grain mites. I can tell you from my experience, the type of grain mites you're describing, is extremely difficult to completely get rid of. I had an infestation before, I threw away everything and wiped down the cupboards and shelves with bleach water; the mites disappeared for months. After some time, we moved house, and when we go back to pack more things a WHOLE MONTH later, we have zillions of grain mites all over the shelf again! There are so many that they're literally rolling off each other like snow balls! I have no idea how that happen, as they are re-infesting an empty shelf. Since then, I always have a dish of water underneath my mealworm/beetle tub; so nothing could get in or out of the individual tubs.

Good luck in getting rid of them!

 

[acpart]

I have had some success getting rid of grain mites that infested my crickets. I had a medium faunarium. I fed out all th crickets in there (not too many), dumped the grain and washed the container with hot water. Over the next few days, I would see grain mites on the inside cover of the enclosure and I just kept washing it with hot water. The grain mites disappeared and stayed gone and fortunately never infested the mealworm container right next to them. I guess a person could rescue a limited number of beetles and large mealworms by picking them out and cleaning them. Keep checking your covers and maybe you can stop them before they get too bad.

ALiza

 

[shadowx362]

I actually dont have any covers on my mealworms I think they just didnt like the chick starter. The weird thing is that they are right next to each other so I think I will use chick starter for my next colony. I know that there might be something in the bedding, but so far no problems.

 

[bitterbeauty]

I had success with sifting the mealworms out of the infested bedding (threw that away) and then rinsed the mealworms until water for about a minute or so (to rinse away any remaining mites) and then started a new container. But I caught the problem early before it was huge.