How long does mealworm pupa take...?

[Jordan]

when breeding mealworms how long does it take the pupa to turn into the beetles?

and also what do i do when they do 'hatch'?

and how much space do they need?


cheers.

 

[fl_orchidslave]

I pretty much ignored mine and just let them do their thing. Once they started they keep going and going. We had about 1700 on-hand so production wasn't crucial for a while. It doesn't take long tho. Every month I put the beetles in new bedding and dump the old bedding with eggs into a big butter tub for a month, let them hatch and grow, then transfer to a small sterlite box about half the size of a shoebox, which is what is used for feeding. Some people use rack systems with screen bottoms, depends what you want to do. Since we use supers mostly for adults, only needed mealies for hatchlings, a large quantity isn't needed. I keep an extra 1000 in the fridge too because one time we ran out of big supers. Mealworm breeding is much simpler and faster than superworms. You can find more about time frames and setups in some of the other threads here.

 

[Jordan]

cheers for the info

just out of interest, how did you go about getting the beetles into another tub? do you just pick them up, or scoop them up? lol.

 

[ZooKeeperKarin]

I use a plastic drawer system I got at Wal*mart. About once a month I transfer the beetles to a fresh drawer to let the eggs in the substrate hatch. I use a kitchen wire/mesh strainer. That gets the bulk of them and you can weed out any dead ones. (The live ones will be easy to pick out as they are the ones crawling all over the edges of the strainer! You just have to kind of flick them into the new drawer.) Strain out the used substrate since you want as many eggs left behind as possible. Throw in a couple carrots and you're good to go again. The care for the baby mealies is the same as adult mealies and beetles.

 

[fl_orchidslave]

Since mine is small scale, I try to keep everything minimal. Beetles in a 32oz tall deli cup almost half full of bedding, a piece of eggcrate, a couple chunks of carrot. Third week every month I change it out to a new deli cup. There's not a lot of beetles so I just pluck them out with tongs. They lay so many eggs that if they eat some in the deli cup it doesn't matter to me.

 

[Jordan]

okay cheers guys. big help!