Mecynorrhina torquata ugandensis colour variations

Mecynorrhina torquata ugandensis is a big if not huge flower beetle. These beetles can grow over 80 mm, which is as big as a medium size goliath beetle. Geographically they can be found in  Uganda and DR Congo. In nature these beetles display a massive variety in their colours and patterns. Because of such variation, the dead specimen of the males of the species are very sought after by insect collectors, and some of them can be sold for as much as fifty pounds or even more (which mainly depends on the size and the rarity of colour variation/pattern of the specimen).  These species are great as pets, because they are quite easy: the adults are perfectly fine on ripe banana and their larvae can be easily raised on any decayed wood/leaf material.  Their cultivation led to appearance of some unusual forms such as "blue" colour variation, which I believe was "selected out" by Japanese breeders and now it is probably the most popular colour form present in culture.  In captivity, unless under certain conditions, the size of the males is normally within 50-65 mm, and the whole cycle from an egg to the adult at 25C can be completed as fast as in 8-10 months, which again makes them amazing pets, when the whole cycle of the beetle development can be observed within such short period.  I have been keeping a significant number of these beetles during recent years and despite the fact that their larvae consume a huge amount of the substrate during their development, they still are probably one of my favourite beetles. Here is a short slide show which I made from photos of my Mecynorrhina torquata ugandensis which I found on my flickr, phone and computer.

 

Please contact me at beetlesaspets@gmail.com regarding any related issue or availability of the larvae of these species.

Beware! Stag beetle larvae predator: click beetle larva!

Good decayed log is a must for most stag beetles if you want to achieve a maximum number of larvae from your stag beetle female. The majority of females would always prefer to lay their eggs into the log instead of laying them into a layer of compacted substrate. If you collect your log from the woodland, there is always a chance that other critters will be living in it. General recommendation to get rid of these is to soak the log in the water for about three days. However, I found that  is often not enough to kill all of them. Thicker logs take more than a week for water to completely soak through the whole log. The other way to destroy things in the log is to heat it, which is often not very convenient. Low temperature long time dry log baking in  a family kitchen oven can be tricky:) More recently I adapted the way of preparing logs by sawing them into shorter sections, so they could just fit into a microwave. Using a microwave 15cm-diameter log can be heated through completely in two 4-5 minutes steps with very little effort. The time needs to be increased for bigger logs.

In my earlier breeding experience, I often would use decayed logs with only short term soaking in water or even without any preparation and most of them would work fine. However, on a number of occasions I discovered that the number of larvae obtained from stag beetle female is smaller than expected and at the same time I found some other beetle larvae in these logs.  Although  many critters such as longhorn beetle larvae are completely safe for the stag beetle larvae, the other critters may not be as safe. Particularly, and I learned it in a hard way, click beetle larvae can hunt and eat stag beetle larvae. And this is not an assumption, while splitting logs when looking for larvae I found click beetle larva eating still semi-alive stag beetle larva. Moreover, if you use chunk of such wood as a decorative top piece in breeding box for any sort of beetle such as rhino or flower beetle, the click beetle larvae can come out of the wood and live in the soil hunting newborn larvae or eating freshly laid eggs. Here are some photos and video of a typical click beetle larva which, hope that you will find it helpful. If you see anything like that in your wood/substrate remove it and sterilize substrate/log by heating it.

Goliathus orientalis preissi broken pupal cell and artificial puaption chamber

Just before constructing a pupal cell, a goliath beetle larva enters "the wondering phase". During this time the larva comes to the top of substrate "wondering" around, and trying to escape its current container. Such larva needs to be placed into a new box containing the mixture of peat and sand, where the larva will later construct its pupal cell. Sometime ago, I placed one of my golaithus orientalis larvae into such box and forgot to label it. Then later when I thought that the box had no larvae inside I decided to use it for another wandering larva goliath beetle larvae. The result was not very nice, as the first larvae finished its cell already and I accidentally broke it while preparing the substrate in the box for the larva N2.  The larva inside of the cell was still pretty active, and I was hoping that it will have some energy to repair the cell, although the damage was massive:(.  Normally such cell damage in large flower beetles such as Mecynorrhina results in larva leaving the cell and dying eventually, as it would not have enough to build a new pupal cell. I left the larvae in the broken cell as it is, and luckily one month later I discovered that it did not leave the cell. I transferred the larvae into the artificial pupal cell made from floral foam and about 2 days ago I discovered that it turned into a gorgeous female pupa! Please see the photos below.