14 replies to this topic

[dermy]

It's been a bit since I've made any kind of Journal, I may not be able to keep ants the same way as I once was but I can still keep various beetle colonies, incl. my Mealworm Colony, Attagenus unicolor (Black Carpet Beetles) and seasonably Dermestes lardarius or the Larder beetle. They are found throughout most of the world so they are a pretty common species, and what I like most about them is their Life-Cycle is very short, compared to most Dermestids anyway. Usually around 50-60 Days at my room temperature of 73f from egg to Adult. But the main reason I'm making this Journal is because of the sheer amount of Adults I was able to collect/continuing to Collect this year:

 

They are pretty fun and move very fast, and also fly so you have to make sure you always keep a lid on things.

 

 

 

Here is also a look at a Male and some Females for the size differences: [I also really like this image because for once it's not as garbage as most of my images]

 

 

The main thing I'm wanting to try testing out is some population dynamics, such as collecting eggs and removing them to prevent cannibalism etc. I have some methods that I want to test out such as black construction paper that is easily removed from the main colony and placed into a setup made for hatching out larvae, that I will have to monitor to make sure I take out larvae as soon as I can see them when they start hatching to prevent them from eating any unhatched eggs.

 

[dermy]

Six Days after starting this experiment and I've got larvae!

 

 

I don't have any accurate images/can't upload a video of them yet because of Youtube's 99 videos every 24hrs [I've already hit that awhile ago] but here are some very "Dermy" Pictures of the eggs I've managed to collect, just some of them, I was able to collect over 70+ from them in the last few days.

 

 

 

I'll update it when I can get a chance to upload the video of the egg hatching into a larvae, even if it's a trash video it's still interesting enough to see.

[dermy]

Update May 27/2019
I've been continuing to get new eggs every day or so, and after 6 days I started noticing larvae.
It's only been 3 days since starting to find larvae and I've already collected 45. I've also
found more adult beetles, bringing my total population of beetles at 78. I'm also giving them access to
water, which should increase egg yeild. Eventually when the larvae grow a bit more I'll get a good count on total
larval population. I've noticed a lot of eggs are glued to the bottom of my containers, but I don't plan to remove them as they are really fragile and will either hatch normally (some already have) or

aren't really too concerning for population sake.

 

Also as said in the above post here is a video showing off the newly hatched larvae (all from 1 day of collecting from the egg container)

 

 

I'm hoping to continue egg collecting and such as the colony grows to keep things going smoothly, seems all years past have had issues with cannibalism, more than likely of the eggs.

Edited by dermy, May 28 2019 - 12:25 AM.

[dermy]

Been about a Week since the last update, here is what my Larval numbers are looking like, I'm averaging 15 more baby larva a day. I've even had a few days where it was a bit more than that. Also something to note is this is just what I got out of the frass so it's not every single larvae in my Larval Colony. I'm still collecting eggs from the beetles (only 1 male has since died) and continue to hatch out/collect larvae every day.

 

 

 

Probably the most prolific I've ever had a Colony of Dermestids in the short term anyway

[dermy]

Here is a video showing my collection of larvae for a few days, everyday since has been about the same, 15-30 new larvae added everyday. I'm also starting to get Pupae. I'm expecting it to continue to cycle as long as I'm continuing to separate out life-stages.

 

Here's a little thing I quickly threw together showing the different life-stages and the time it took for mine to go through each one at 73f. (the pupae stage was calculated last year in 2018)

Spoiler

 

 

[Nare]

So when do you start feeding them dead bodies? Your skull collection must grow. Or does this species not do that?

[dermy]

So when do you start feeding them dead bodies? Your skull collection must grow. Or does this species not do that?

 

This species (Dermestes lardarius) can in fact eat dead animal materials, but it's not as simple as dropping in a dead animal, you need to do a lot of prep work. Removing as much meat, internal junk etc. as you can, drying it to a beef jerky like consistency, all the while making sure nothing gets into the colony. Generally speaking the colony should be in the Thousands before you even bother with feeding them anything like that, I'd also need very good ventilation, something I don't currently have. No matter what it is, you wanna make sure the beetles finish it up in a few days tops. If not it will start to get pretty rancid.

[dermy]

Here's an update on how the larval Colony is doing, it's cool to think about 90% didn't exist prior to my egg collecting

 

 

 

I also already have a pupae that will be turning into my first beetle soon, and then hopefully much more. I want to compare egg collecting with "Fresh Females"  to "Older ones"

[dermy]

Might Not be a Grand Update, but here are some pictures of what the Larval Colony looks like. I'm sadly noticing a slow down on the egg production and subsequently the new larval population, but still quite a few larvae will be in the pupal stage in a week or so and soon I'll have the next Generation of Females producing eggs.

Something I haven't mentioned here, is water. You need to make sure you provide both the larvae and adults with moisture, esp. Female beetles. With access to water they will produce much more eggs than they would without. Also helps stop larval cannibalization.

 

 

Eventually I'll update a video on them as well but for now just the pictures sorry. I do have a lot of videos on the colony (Probably closing in on the 300+ mark)  just nothing worth Posting in a Journal

[dermy]

Here's just a quick little video update from June 14th/2019 of the Larval Colony I'll make a more recent one in a week or two when I get the chance to do it properly:

[TennesseeAnts]

Poor gold fish....

[dermy]

Poor gold fish....

This is what I love this bin/colony of Dermestids for, getting rid of food wastes/dead insects from my Mealworm colony that would otherwise be tossed into a garbage can. I'm hoping to get double what I have currently next generation, since it appears my females are done egg laying.

[dermy]

The Larval colony continues to grow, not as much as at one time where I was getting at least 15-20 larvae a day but still 5-10 a day isn't bad. I have a lot of Larvae that are turning into pupae pretty soon so things should pick up here in July

 

Here's a Quick video of them "worming" around

[dermy]

The Larval Colony continues to grow, crazy to look back even a month ago and look at it's growth. Not Just in numbers but also

the general size of the larvae.

 

I'm not getting nearly as many new larvae everyday, usually around 5-10 compared to my peak which was 30-40 a day. But I'm sure soon enough I'll get Gen. 2 of beetles and start getting more eggs/larvae.

 

Here's a video on the current Larval population in the same bin as the above picture.

 

I'm not good at guessing numbers but I think there's at least a few hundred in there. I'll try and get another updated video sometime in later July/Early August as well as another comparison shot. Perhaps with both June and July so it's three months of "growth". I'm very happy with this years Dermestes lardarius Colony, growing much faster than my Attagenus unicolor ever did, even though they are 6 years old at this point.

[dermy]

Well this is a weird Journal to update (for once it's not an update to say "They All Died"). Lets give a little bit of information since it's been since July that I've updated.

Basically in Late July I noticed my beetles completely stopped egg laying, no new larvae nothing. I've had this happen in the past, I just think the beetles are only fertile and able to produce eggs for X amount of time and then no longer lay eggs, but continue to live for x amount of time (now they are starting to slowly dwindle down, but I still have likely 50-60 Adults, I gave them a different bin to basically keep them, I don't expect anything new from them but don't want to kill them)

(Here's the older beetles)

 

The larval colony is probably still at around 100+ (I didn't bother bother to take a recent picture of them sorry) There is also some that are starting to pupate. Around 11th of August I started to get my first batch of 2nd Generation (maybe 1st generation since the other ones were wild caught?) of Beetles. I waited until they hardened up before adding them together with food and some egg laying materials. Here's what has turned into beetles so far (it's not many but at least it shows that they are turning into beetles and not just simply being eaten, that's one thing that I failed to mention. You need to give the larvae something hard to burrow into and pupate in, or they will eat the pupae!)

 

 

It's around 13 Beetles, I see a lot of Juicy Females so I'm hoping soon they'll get down to business and I can start getting some new eggs and eventually new Larvae. As more beetles hatch out and become normal coloured, I will add them into the colony as well. I'll get some images of the beetle setups, the larvae and some of the pupae that I've saved (a lot are burrowed into stuff and I don't plan on digging them out) I just wanted to give a quick update to show that they are in fact still alive and I'm hopeful that I'll get some new eggs/larvae from these new beetles soon