Refrigerating mealworm pupae?

[pandyana]

I have a ton of these in my colony and omg so many beetles but I don't need that many so i can put them in the refrigerator and take them out to finish their morphing later? Will it hurt or kill them?

I currently have my mealworm colony in a 3 drawer system. The beetles are in the top with oats for substrate and the bottom of the drawer cut out with screen screwed on so the eggs and babies fall in to the drawer below. The babies are in the middle drawer and I sift through those every couple weeks and pull out the bigger sized ones. The bottom drawers have the bedding dust that I keep for a month to let stray eggs hatch.

The larger ones are in a clothing tote that has 2 holes cut out on top and screen again screwed on top of the lid.

The problem is the larger ones are morphing now at a rapid rate and I fear I may be over run by beetles. It's getting hard to keep up with them now. I would like to slow this down as I don't need a huge amount of mealworms. I have 5 geckos but apparently I'm raising a lot of mealworms and I've even give some away and threw them in a bowl outside for the birds lol.

Should i even worry about the colony growing so large or no?

 

[indyana]

From what you're saying, you don't need them to become beetles and probably won't need them later either at the rate yours are going. I'd suggest just freezing the extras to kill and them putting them out for wild birds or disposing of them.

I do not know about refrigerating to pause the development into beetles, sorry.