r/mealworms

I was given mealworms along with an injured bird (i did not feed the worms to the bird obviously) and then i was stuck with some mealworms. this was in 2022. i decided to keep them as pets bc i didn't have any other choice. i have an extremely hard time killing anything and i always have. but i can't do it anymore, the entire thing has become too much work and it stresses me out and i have consistent bug nightmares. we have a weekly compost pickup. if i dump the tanks into there would they be ok? would that be bad to do? i don't want to kill them but i dont want them anymore 😭

Had some trouble with grain mites in the past. Now I wipe down the containers at least once a month and feed less often. Do you do anything special to keep them away?

Hi all I finally seem to have a good healthy batch of beetles and 5 up and coming trays of mealworms. I’m rearing them for my chickens. Wanting advice please.
How many larvae should I reserve for the next generation? I haven’t got larvae again yet but don’t want to feed all my mealworms to the chooks and forget to save enough for sustaining the population. I have 7 chickens.
Currently they are on commercial layer pellets and I am growing duckweed and mealworms to eventually become less reliant on shop bought non organic food.
The last batch of organic chook food I bought was off and my chooks refused it even though it was expensive so I’m back to non organic which I hate but the organic was $80 a bag vs $40 a bag and they wouldn’t eat it. Hence my mealworm farm attempts. Currently they are eating wheat bran and carrots and I tried oatmeal but it’s definitely not got as many eggs/worms in that tray and seems to attract more ants and go mouldy quicker.

Hi everyone,

i'am going to have 3 weeks of vacation and i need some advice what to do with my worms in that time.

- I have 5 Boxes 60x30cm each with around 3cm of substrate. Worms are for human consumption.
- Each of the box contain worms in 2 week stadium apart starting with eggs laid just right now and ending with a box with worms approx. 12mm in length.
- With the current temperature those will be ready in around 4 weeks. (i hope not earlier)
- The substrate should be fine for all boxes except of the oldest one.

My plan:

- Adding some more substrate to the oldest box
- getting some Water Gel and putting it on a PP plate so the worms can get the moist.

But what i'am not sure: what do i do with the egg and very small worm boxes?

How do you handle Vacation with the worms?

Thank you so much