How Many Dermestids in a Colony?
Today I started cleaning large colony #2. In the past two days I have transferred about 600 ml of dermestids from old home to new, clean digs. I have been curious as to how many bugs that represented....
I measured out 50 ml of mixed sized insects and commenced to count.
To my surprise that was at a minimum of 650 larvae and adults. Considering, I did not count the very small bug kids, which there were lots, I must have a bunch of critters in that container.Right now that makes this colony about 7700 bugs.
I am a long ways from having this transfer complete. The last colony I cleaned ended up providing me with almost a thousand young adults that were in pupation when the transfer of active insects was finished. Not to bad for keeping a box around for a month before emptying it out. If you tried to buy adults only it would cost a pretty penny and these guys are YOUNG, at the start of their egg laying period.I'm hoping for another bonus crop of these adults to start showing up in about a month. Maybe I'll sell a batch or two of adults only.
