Hooray! Beetles!

I found my first two beetles last night!  They are light brown, and I've read that they will soon darken up and become black.  I took them out of the pupa drawer and put them into another drawer with some more oatmeal in it.  I gave them a piece of apple, since I read that beetles need to drink.  

This picture was taken before I took the beetles away from the pupae.  The pupae are the little off-white curled-up things.

My setup

Here is a picture of my plastic cabinet for the mealworms.  I put the worms in the bottom drawer and am picking out the pupae to put in the middle drawer.  I don't know if I really have to separate them, but read somewhere that the worms will eventually eat the pupae, and the beetles will eat the eggs.  For now, I'll separate them since I don't have many and it's easy.  I guess the novelty will wear off after a while!

Starting my mealworm farm

I've been meaning to learn how to raise mealworms for over a year now.  Last summer, there was a drastic shortage of mealworms, and our wildlife clinic really had to scramble to feed all the baby birds that we were raising.  Unfortunately, it takes several months to harvest your first mealworms, so it wouldn't have helped for me to start then, so I put it off.

I finally got around to starting my colony a couple of weeks ago.  I read several articles on the Internet about how to do it, and will try and develop my own method.

I bought a three-drawer plastic cabinet from Walmart for $14.  I am using old-fashioned oatmeal as the bedding.  I put a layer of about an inch of oatmeal in a drawer with about 1/4 cup of worms from our wildlife hospital.  I put a couple of baby carrots on top and covered it with two sheets of newspaper which don't quite go to the edge of the drawers.  The article said to leave a couple of inches between the newspaper and the side of the drawer.  When I peek inside, the worms are usually on top of the bedding just under the newspaper, and then go down while I watch.