finally- easy bean beetle cultues

[flybyferns]

A couple of years back, my first few bean beetle cultures did not go so well.
There were several failures. I would buy them w/ live beetles, only to have them die in a very short period of time?

I believe, I finally figured out what the problem was. I was making the beans too deep !
Providing this 'extra' food makes it difficult for them to climb?
I separate them ( make new cultures) more often , which seems to help as well.

Below -These are in about 1 -1/2" of black-eyed peas. ( in a FF container)
They love the corrugated cardboard. They go between the layers.
This make them easy to shake them out.


This was one new culture month ago ---- now six.

They are very good at playing "dead" too

Yummy !

[LilyPad]

That is awesome! I can't even manage fruit flies. I was always buying cultures from the local pet store because mine kept failing.

[flybyferns]

That is awesome! I can't even manage fruit flies. I was always buying cultures from the local pet store because mine kept failing.

I tried tons of 'homemade recipes' for FF media.
Done with that!
I use Repashy 'Super Fly' ........."Tried and True "!

Make the mix deeper for hediye - they are a pain and take longer.
The melanogaster and gliders are easier to culture and great for tads and smaller PDFs.

[LilyPad]

That's good to know, I haven't ventured into the world of darts simply because I hated dealing with fruit flies. When I had spring peepers, they were on them for a good 8 months before I could get them small crickets.

[chibikaie]

What kind of beetles are those?

I just discovered that my mealworms pupated while I wasn't paying attention, so I'm hugely excited that I might have actually managed a mealworm culture. (I only feed out one or two worms a month, so the rest had a party in their little cup.) Those bean setups don't look too difficult.