Quote Originally Posted by MatthewM1 View Post
Its my understanding that if you start your colonies with very few individuals that in about 5 years you will start to see a drop off in production and eventually they will just not produce.
That would be a very manageable time frame to introduce new stock once or twice, and even if it were only a few...say you have a 5 year old roach bin with 1000 roaches (just for illustration) and you purchased 20 adult roaches from someone else. Take 20 from the old bin and pair them with the new stock and let that colony grow while proportionately feeding off the old stock. Probably the easiest thing to do for caterpillars would be to just order new eggs after a season of several breeding cycles.