As your menagerie has grown, you’ve no doubt thought about raising your own feeder insects. If you’ve been shopping for super worms week after week and wondering how to raise them yourself, you’ve come to the right place.
Constantly running to the local store or ordering your feeders online becomes quite a tedious task after a short time. Breeding super worms yourself is not only profitable but a lot of fun.
The first step to successfully breeding super worms is learning how to breed them. Healthier larvae will pupate with fewer problems and therefore develop into healthier, livelier beetles.
Once you can maintain a healthy colony of larvae, it’s time to try to get them to reproduce.
There are a few things that cause confusion for most people when trying to breed their super worms.
The first thing to note about breeding super worms is that they will not pupate and then become beetles if they are kept together as mealworms usually do. Unlike mealworms, which will complete their life cycles and breed all together in the same container, super worms like to be left alone when it comes to pupating. When your larvae grow, you will need to separate each one into its own little enclosure.
A common method of doing this is to use film canisters to temporarily house each worm. Tackle boxes or screw boxes work just as well. Separate each Super Worm into its own little home. Once separated, the larvae will eventually stop all activity, curl up into a C shape, slowly pupate, and then transform into a beetle, all in the same small enclosure. This process will take a couple of weeks, but it’s pretty fun to watch.
Once your larvae have completed their transformations, you’ll have plenty of hungry and thirsty beetles on your hands. Take all of your new beetles and place them together in a container such as a Rubbermaid container with a secure lid. Also, cover your Rubbermaid bin with a wood chip substrate. Your beetles will need a source of food and water. Potatoes or apples work great for hydration, and moistened dry dog food works well as a food source. The added protein in the dog food will help with egg laying.
Keep your beetles at a temperature of around 80 degrees. Keep your enclosure humid with regular misting. Don’t overlook giving your beetles a place to lay their eggs. This simple mistake can have you scratching your head months from now wondering why you never got your superworm beetles to reproduce. A piece of cork bark placed on top of the substrate works well. Without this, your beetles can lay their eggs in the substrate which can be eaten by other beetles.
Within a few weeks you should see very small worms moving around in the bottom of your substrate.