Anybody know a good way to gather the mealies away from beetles??

:yessir:

Anybody know a good way to gather the mealies away from beetles??

:yessir:

How about taking the beetles away from the mealies.....

Take two sections of paper towel and fold them so they look like one. Get it wet and wring it out real good. Then lay it out flat on top of the tub of beetles/mealies. Right on top of the beetles themselves. After a couple of hours the beetles will be all over the paper towel. They will literally flock to it. Then just remove the paper towel with the beetles over it. Depending on the amount of beetles you may have to repeat the process a couple times. But it works like a charm.

I haven't tried that before. I usually pull the pupae before they turn and toss them into another tub.

I used to breed mealies back in the day, good times...lol:rockon:

I haven't tried that before. I usually pull the pupae before they turn and toss them into another tub.

Maybe I misunderstood what Larry was asking because I do exactly what you do Bryon.

Mealies pupate. I remove the pupae as they form to a new tub of virgin bedding. The pupae become beetles in the new tub and lay eggs for a while. When they have laid eggs long enough that is when I break out the wet paper towel to remove the beetles and put them in another new tub of virgin bedding.

I keep the beetles in a tub for roughly one month. Then move them to the next tub for roughly one month. Then the next tub for roughly one month, etc, etc. That way each tub will have the same size mealies in them. One tub will have smalls, another tub mediums and the last tub larges.

When I had them I used the paper towel to get most of the beetles, but not all out of the tub. I did that for a bit. Then just said screw it and left them in there. I had no trouble with just leaving the beetles in with the worms. I kept my worms in a sterilite 5 drawer cart thing. I had each tub about half full with bedding. Tossed in an orange and apple slice every few days. I had so many extras I started selling them to the local bait shops. I started with only 300 worms. Yeah it took a while for them to get breeding, But once they did it was crazy. I found with the worms kind of like the roaches, the less I messed with them the better they did. Kind of just let them do their thing.

I haven't tried that before. I usually pull the pupae before they turn and toss them into another tub.


This is what I do, seems to work.

Maybe I misunderstood what Larry was asking because I do exactly what you do Bryon.

Mealies pupate. I remove the pupae as they form to a new tub of virgin bedding. The pupae become beetles in the new tub and lay eggs for a while. When they have laid eggs long enough that is when I break out the wet paper towel to remove the beetles and put them in another new tub of virgin bedding.

I keep the beetles in a tub for roughly one month. Then move them to the next tub for roughly one month. Then the next tub for roughly one month, etc, etc. That way each tub will have the same size mealies in them. One tub will have smalls, another tub mediums and the last tub larges.

I usually toss about 50 - 100 pupae into a tub and leave them. I'll do this for a number of tubs to TRY to keep the colony growing but Lolo keeps ganking the mealies as fast as I can grow them.

I usually toss about 50 - 100 pupae into a tub and leave them. I'll do this for a number of tubs to TRY to keep the colony growing but Lolo keeps ganking the mealies as fast as I can grow them.

I need to start doing this. I've got too much going on in the tubs I've got. Beetles, mealies, pulps ect ect

How many tubs do you guys set up to keep things going smooth??

When I'm paying close attention to the tubs and I'm getting a good amount of pupae , i'll have at least 4 or more kitty litter pans or 15 qt tubs to toss pupae in. Right now we have 2 28 qts for the bulk of the colony , 1 tub 32" l x 14"w to run the small worms to grow up and 3 - 4 smaller tubs to toss pupae in.