We have darkling beetles, and it is a happy thing!

Some of the mealworm pupa have emerged as adult darkling beetles, which means we are well on our way to having our own mealworm farm.

I did put mesh screen on top of the beetle drawer, as well as the mesh on the bottom so the eggs can fall through to the drawer below. I wanted one extra precaution to keep the beetles from escaping. They are pretty chill beetles, really. Not very fast, like to dig down into the oatmeal and hide in the dark. I also had to hot glue in the mesh at the bottom because the little critters could crawl under the mesh. Oops.

We’ll see in a few weeks if any eggs hatch in the drawer below! We are switching drawers every two weeks. We have 8 drawers and the life cycle to pupa can be 10 weeks, so each drawer should collect eggs for a little over 2 weeks for us to have a near continuous supply of mealworms for the chickens.