Hello!
Some months ago I had a little mealworm farm in a small container. Initially there were about 25-30 large larvae bought from a store, 2 or 3 of them were killed and fed to the ants, and all the other ones were turning into pupae. Many of them were just getting black and dying on different larva and pupa stages. I think the conditions were proper though, the box wasn't too moist, I used common oats mixed with hammarus as a substrate, pieces of apples, lettuce and carrots were added sometimes. After some weeks all of the pupae became bugs, there were about 20 bugs, they were laying eggs and the next generation of worms came. Before my ants were put into hibernation, I'd fed them with those little worms and they were the only insect protein source, I was spending about 6 - 8 worms a week on my ants. The worm growth was really slow and after 2-3 months the were only a couple of medium-sized worms, but they were not even close to the size of the initial bought worms. So all of the worms were eventually killed and fed to ants before hibernation.
During the whole time there were a lot of larvae and pupae that were just getting black and dying off, is it OK when so many random deaths happen if the conditions are decent? And how many worms do you actually need to start an infinite colony? I thought 25-50 of them should be enough...
And when you pick the next worm to kill, do you aim for the older or the younger one? Which way is less threatening for the worm colony?
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