Meal worm eggs?

[daddyburgi]

I was wondering if anyone out there could tell me how many eggs a zophobas beetle (super worm beetle) lays? I have around 25 beetles right now and feel like there has to be nearly 1000 small worms. I had to move them into a 20 gallon long tank today because there are so many baby worms.

 

[strhunter2]

im not sure about mealworms but i breed superworms and the female bettels can lay up to 500 in their life time

 

[daddyburgi]

Super worms is what I think I meant. 500 in their life time? What the heck am I going to do with all these worms? lol I tossed in some baby carrots that were starting to go bad yesterday and by this afternoon I had to toss in another hand full because they were gone. I have them in ground up oatmeal and we just toss in whatever veggie we have handy for them such as celery a lot, carrots, the centers from collard greens. The other day we had nothing and found out how many babies we had so we tossed in some blueberries. They hollowed out every one of them.

 

[strhunter2]

did you have to separate the worms in order to get beetles ?

and remember i said up to 500 they will probably lay around 300 and even then some of the eggs are bad

 

[daddyburgi]

did you have to separate the worms in order to get beetles ?

and remember i said up to 500 they will probably lay around 300 and even then some of the eggs are bad

No I never separated them. That is what confuses me. But they were marked as super worms at petsmart I think. I will go look up a picture and see if they are or not.

Yeah just looks like a big meal worm sorta, right?

 

[strhunter2]

if you dident separate the worms and you got beetles then they are meal worms,

what the difference between meal worms and superworms are i have no clue except for you can control superworms for when you want them to pupate

 

[danab]

Like the above poster said. If you had the worms in a container and did not separate any of the worms to force them to turn into beetles and you got beetles anyway, you most likely started with mealworms or what they market as "Giant mealworms". Giant mealworms are usually given hormones to delay them from turning into pupaes which increases their size. I have also read that giant mealworms may have been grown with brewers yeast to increase their size.

Superworms will be much larger and thicker. They grow to 2 inches long. If you got beetles without separating superworms, that is pretty lucky. Superworm beetles lay about 500 eggs in a lifetime. Mealworms can lay up to 200 eggs at a time.

If you really want to know what you have, maybe you can take a couple of worms and put them in a fridge area about 42-55 degrees. If they die they are supers, if they survive then they are mealies. Mealworms can be refrigerated but superworms cannot.

Timberline has some info on their site (they sell all three).
http://www.timberlinefisheries.com/care-instructions/

I keep about 1000 full sized mealworms per small shoebox sized plastic container.

 

[daddyburgi]

Like the above poster said. If you had the worms in a container and did not separate any of the worms to force them to turn into beetles and you got beetles anyway, you most likely started with mealworms or what they market as "Giant mealworms". Giant mealworms are usually given hormones to delay them from turning into pupaes which increases their size. I have also read that giant mealworms may have been grown with brewers yeast to increase their size.

Superworms will be much larger and thicker. They grow to 2 inches long. If you got beetles without separating superworms, that is pretty lucky. Superworm beetles lay about 500 eggs in a lifetime. Mealworms can lay up to 200 eggs at a time.

If you really want to know what you have, maybe you can take a couple of worms and put them in a fridge area about 42-55 degrees. If they die they are supers, if they survive then they are mealies. Mealworms can be refrigerated but superworms cannot.

Timberline has some info on their site (they sell all three).
http://www.timberlinefisheries.com/care-instructions/

I keep about 1000 full sized mealworms per small shoebox sized plastic container.

Thank you. I would try the fridge thing but all I have babies at the moment. Think I could do that with two beetles and how long should they be in there?

I wish I still had the container they came in so I would know what it said. I would hate to have paid for superworms and get Schwarzenegger sized meal worms.

 

[danab]

Normally you wouldnt' store beetles in a fridge regardless so Im not sure that would be a good check. You can wait for the worms to get a little biggger then check them in the fridge if they are super tiny right now. Or just let them grow and see how big they get. Your not treating with hormones so I would think they would be normal sized this generation.

 

[daddyburgi]

Well I was at petsmart tonight and i checked and they were labeled as super worms by timberline or whatever company that is. Who knows. All I know is that I have a lot of them. :lol: