Mealworm Culture Day

  Today we decided it was time to refresh the mealworm larvae. Billy's 2nd grade class did a science unit on bugs last fall.  When it was over, Mr. Cruz let Billy take home six adults.  We kept them in a container with a few ounces of oatmeal for several months but eventually they died.  When we cleaned their container, we found lots of young larvae and decided to keep them going.  This was our first food change for this second generation. 
  We poured out the food into a big pile in the center of a nice flat lid, cleaned their container, and added new oatmeal.  Next we had to get the larvae out of their old food. We used tweezers and a paint brush to move the oatmeal flakes out toward the edges.  We found 40 larvae, and a bunch of old molted skins.  We thought there were probably more, so we decided to search three more times.  We pushed the food from the edges back to the middle and found two more larvae.  Then, in pushing the food back to the edge, we found one more.  The last pass found no more larvae so we think we got them all; 43 in total.  We added one fresh carrot to help maintain moisture.  Next time we go to the pet store we will look for some insect vitamins to keep them healthy. 

  Larvae are fragile creatures.  To move them around, we swept them onto a small piece of paper using the paintbrush.  We have soft entomology forceps but these still have enough force to harm our little guys.