Dermestid beetles are capable of turning a head into a clean skull in a few days.
I took my freshly cleaned colony and added a deer head. This colony has stripped heads in three days and it is even larger now. Today is day 3 and it needs another day or so to finish. It took me a little while to figure out why the bugs are so slow - then I realized the problem. Temperature. So simple and I know just what a few degrees can do.
Even though it is summer our temps have been lower than usual and the building my colony is in has been cooler than I like. Nighttime temps went into the 50s and my small room was just a little over 60 degrees.
Dermestid beetles are very active between 70 and 85 degrees...Raise the temps and you raise their metabolism and they need to eat more.
That is a trick most dermestid users do not know.
This afternoon those larvae and beetles were busy and cleaning just as they should. All is well in beetledum when the heat is on!
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