Breeding Mealworms

The information contained here is what has worked for us and we hope it's as successful for you. You can start your mealworm colony with either mealworms purchased online or at a bait shop or you can start with the mealworm beetles themselves. The basics for a mealworm colony Housing You'll need a plastic storage container. I use small plastic cat litter pans that are 15"X12"X4" You don't have to have a lid for your container. I've never had a beetle or mealworm escape out of my litter pans. Bedding For bedding I use cricket chow. I buy mine from SAS Supply, I get a 20 pound bag for 15.50 + shipping. You can also use bran flakes, rolled oats, oat bran, fish food flakes, dried non fat milk, and crushed bran flakes cereal. This is an excellect diet for both the beetles and mealworms. Water The mealworms and beetles will both need something to supply water to them. I use a potato cut in half and layed on it's side not with the fresh cut end on the bedding. This way you don't have the moisture of the potato soaking into the bedding and promoting mold. Mold is not only bad for the colony but it's also bad for the reptile you are feeding the mealworms to. You can also use fresh vegetables and fruits like carrots, celery, apples and oranges. You can also supply leafy vegetables but either make sure they are rinsed very well or use organically grown veggies. Vegetables are sprayed with pesticides so they need to be cleaned well before feedeing to the colony. Time Frame If you start your colony with mealworms it could take a couple of months for them to pupate depending on the age of the mealworms you're starting with. The pupa is the stage where the worm is turning into a beetle. The pupa takes about 2 weeks to turn into a beetle. Once you have a colony of beetles in your conatiner they will live and lay eggs in the bedding. At any given time you'll probably catch the beetles mating.  You'll see them buried in the bedding at times. This is when they are laying eggs. The eggs will take a couple of months to hatch which is when you'll see very tiny mealworms deep under the bedding. Usually at 3 months or when I find I have a lot of tiny mealworms in the bedding, I move the beetles to a new litter pan and start the process over again. After a while of having a colony of mealworms going in a container, you'll notice more waste (fine gray dust) produced by the mealworms than actual bedding. At this time use a 10 gallon tank screen lid (a very small holed screen lid) and use it to sift the mealworms out of that bedding with the waste. The mealworms are then put into a clean litter pan with fresh bedding. You'll also find the shed skins of the mealworms at the top of the bedding. Mealworms shed their skins as they grow. You can take your conatiner outside and gently blow across the top of the container. This gets the skins out of the container leaving the bedding clean. That's all you need to know to have a nice size colony of mealworms. We have a lot of Leopard Geckos (Breeders and offspring produced each year) and a pair of Bearded Dragons that are fed mealworms. We use a lot of mealworms and find we always have enough for our needs. If you find you have too many mealworms you can either give them away to someone who needs them for their herps, sell the excess to a local pet store or bait shop. It's a good idea to keep a small container on hand with bedding in it if you find some beetles turning into the pupa stage. I've found that the beetles and mealworms will canibalize (eat) the pupa. Keep the pupa in the spare container until they turn into beetles then add them to the beetle colony. This way you add young beetles to your colony and don't have to start a whole new colony at one time.