DERMESTID BEETLES: Information on Bedding Materials verses Pupating Materials in Beetle colonies

What is bedding and what are pupation materials in a Dermestid colony?

My book provides this information but I did not mention cotton as this is a relative new bedding material but recycled cotton batting from mattresses has been used for years. With changing times this recycled material is hard to find.

Bedding material is the portion of the beetle living area that they travel in, hide and rest as well as collecting in large and small groups. 

An example is areas under feed boxes or in old used up Styrofoam. If you raise a feed box you will probably see large numbers of larvae in very small areas. These insects spend time in this type of group. These areas are called galleries and can hold hundreds of larvae at a time. I have no idea if it is for warmth or just a bug thing but it routinely occurs.

A relatively new addition has been added to the bedding material and that is cotton balls, but cotton batting has been around for years. The bugs are drawn to it and will use it for small or large congregations and hiding just as they use newspaper and the other common bedding materials.

Cotton is is NOT pupation material for Dermestids

Cotton provides no physical barriers for larvae protection. Normal pupating materials for Dermestid larvae in the wild is wood, soil, or any other material that they find that protects them from the elements and provides a safe place to pupate.  That would be most any area that they can burrow into and is free from other dermestids. Any dermestid larvae will potentially cannibalize pupa if they are vulnerable.

 If the larvae cannot find a safe spot right away, they can delay pupation for several weeks but at some point they simply find a spot and go into pupation.

In captivity there are few options besides what the colony owner provides. A few items that make a safe environment would be clean Styrofoam blocks large enough to handle a large number of insects or several, corrugated card board can also work, wood blocks,(not cedar or other woods heavy with pitch or aromatics) Most any hard wood will fill the need. Each item has a draw back and the easiest to work with is probably Styrofoam.

When Styrofoam is used you need to understand that it no longer serves the purpose when it no longer has no open areas available. As in space for non-connecting burrows.

At that point you would need to add more Styrofoam and clean the old pieces out of larvae that have turned it into communal housing. By this time, no pre-pupal larvae will select it as a pupation area, instead they go to the deeper part of the bedding and start the process of pupation. This behavior happens because it is the only marginally safe place they can find. When this happens you will have a high mortality rate of pupating larvae due to cannibalization, potential disease in the stressed larvae as well as loss of body mass resulting from the delay of pupation. These situations result in very high death rates and fewer adults. 

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