Tropical beetle larvae for sale

I have following larvae for sale now

1)  Mecynorrhina ugandensis - harmless massive giant African flower beetles, can reach up to 85 mm, very easy to keep and breed, have massive colour variety, so it is fun to cross breed different colour forms
Larvae from brown-green-orange-white parents on photo below, L1 £3 each and L2 £3.50 each, 10+ available

2) Mecynorrhina ugandensis, L1  £3.50 each and L2 £4 each; larvae from the blue male and orange female parents shown on photo below

10+ available    ALMOST ALL SOLD, only a few L2s left!!!

3) Mecynorrhina ugandensis, orange parents, male orange red with white stripes
 L1 £3.50 each larvae from the parents on photo below

10+ available

4) Rainbow stag beetle, Phalacrognathus Muelleri, L1 larvae £7 each, L2 £8 each 10+ available, these are always in high demand so hurry up.
These Australian beetles are excellent pets as they can live up to 2 years.

Discount on orders of 10+ larvae. 

Some dynastes granti larvae will be available in a few months and a few other species.

Also have trio adults of MU 1 male +2 females. Females are not mated yet 2 weeks old and male is one week old, £40 for all three. 
TRIO IS SOLD!!!
Photo of the trio below

payment by paypal
Please contact me regarding the availability of the grubs at beetlesaspets@gmail.com

The rainbow stag beetle, Phalacrognathus Muelleri, care sheet

  
Adults

Temperature ~23-28C. 
Humidity: High. 
Can be kept in small containers, if no breeding is required. If you  keep your beetles in small containers, better to keep them individually or at least in pairs, male and female.  The aggressive males will kill other males and the same thing may happen with females: aggressive females may kill other females in a very small enclosure.  For big groups it is better  to keep them in large containers with lots of hiding places created by placing pieces of wood or bark on the top of the soil. The beetles spend most of the day time hiding underground, and often become more active in low light conditions. They will escape if they have a chance, so the box should be kept tightly closed, and a few pen-size holes need to be provided in the lid or the top part in the side of the container for better air circulation.

They feed well on banana or other ripe sweet fruits or beetle jelly.  They seem to like banana more, perhaps due to a high protein content. Some breeders believe that adults of these species require a lots of protein and add some yogurt into the mashed banana.  I feed them with my home-made beetle jelly (http://beetlesaspets.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/jelly-for-tropical-beetles-at-home.html).  

Breeding 

     Initially I had a massive issue with mating my first rainbows. They were placed into a properly organised large container designed for egg laying and after six months of waiting I discovered no eggs:(.  After several discussions on forums I came to the conclusion that the major male (with massive horns), could not simply catch the females which were normally hiding underground. The solution was to place them in a small enclosure with no hiding places and provide food in one spot.  Male normally feeds and guards the food at the same time, so catching hungry female for him was not a problem in the small box. Egg laying setup is pretty much the same as for many stag beetles: decayed oak or beech log partially buried into garden soil or mulched wood. The female burrows the hole inside of the log and deposits eggs, simultaneously filling the hole with mulched wood and with parts of the substrate. If mulched wood or fermented flakes are used to fill the box, the female may lay eggs in the substrate too, normally in the bottom layer. If there is more than one female in the container, they may clean up each others holes to lays their own eggs. After about 3 months logs are carefully split with a knife or a screwdriver and the larvae are removed. Eggs can also be removed and placed in the tubs filled with the larvae substrate. 


Larvae

Mulched white rotten oak will be sufficient to produce minor healthy adults. However, to grow major adults, good quality fermented wood or even better, kinshi substrate, are required. I found the procedure making kinshi a bit disappointing,  as every 3rd tub I made with kinshi was contaminated, and the procedure itself was rather time- and resource-consuming. Some hobbyists use dog food as a supplement to grow bigger larvae, but I did not like this approach, as it attracts parasitic mites. In the late L3 stage the larvae  will create the pupal chamber and transform to the pupa. I found that the rate of survival of the pupa is much higher if pupa is transferred into the artificial pupa container, which I normally make from floral foam. After beetles come out of the pupa, they will stay in their  cells inactive for a couple of weeks and then they will be ready to mate again.

homemade kinshi

To see more photos of beetles, please visit my flickr page at

https://www.flickr.com/photos/radio_ga_ga/

You can also contact me via beetlesaspets@gmail.com regarding any related issue and availability of these beetles.

Colourmorph of Mecynorrhina ugandensis; Japanese blue male vs green brown yellow female

Last year I cross-bred two green-brown-yellow females with a blue Japanese line male of mecynorrhina torquata ugandensis and left several larvae from these parents for myself. The larvae pupated about 2 months ago and now some of the pupae started to hatch. The result has exceeded my expectation; the beetles came out with the dark green velvety pronotum and  a dark red elytra,  with some white stripes preserved on both the pronotum and the elytra. Below is the photo of the pair of such beetles, male left, female right. Now I am wondering what body colour will have the next generation from these parents, and will I be able to get blue beetle strain back?

The European rhinoceros beetle, oryctes nasicornis breeding report

Last spring I obtained some L3 larvae of the European rhinoceros beetle, oryctes nasicornis.  These beetles are fairly large and can grow up to 4 cm or even bigger for some subspecies such as oryctes nasicornis grypus.  In nature their larvae live in rotten wood and their distribution is often associated with compost heaps and sawdust mills.  Moreover, the relatively higher temperature during winter in compost and sawdust heaps allowed these beetles to spread far north in Europe and Asia.  Remarkably, the oryctes nasicornis is absent in the United Kingdom and has not been reported breeding in the wild in this country.  The larvae feed mainly on decayed wood, but any decayed vegetation, like the one that can be found in compost heaps, can serve as a food source. The adult beetles do not feed, however, can live several month using reserves accumulated during the larval part of the life cycle of the  beetle.

My larvae were in late L3 when I obtained them, so they turned into the pupa pretty soon. Interestingly, the pupal stage lasted only 2-3 weeks, perhaps because the containers were kept with my tropical beetles, and the temperature there was around 22-25C.  Adults (2 males+2 females) were transferred into an egg laying container (40l plastic box) where they stayed inactive for about 5-7 weeks. The egg laying container was set up as follows. Bottom layer- 15-20 cm of the garden soil mixed with mulched oak leaves and rotten wood (oak, poplar, willow). The proportion of wood:leaves:soil=80%:10%:10%. This layer was pressed hard. On the top of this layer, I placed another layer (about 15 cm) of the soil with the higher contents of mulched wood and leaves. All was finished up with individual chunks of well-decayed wood, bark and oak leaves on the top.  

The adults spent about 3-4 months inactive in the garden shed. After that I transferred them into my beetle breeding cupboard where they stayed inactive for another couple weeks.   After one night I discovered that big chunk of softwood was split into a few pieces, which suggested that something is going on there:)  I waited patiently for about two months and then checked the content of the box.  Firstly I found one female dead :( and then a reasonably big L1 larvae in a top layer. When I started digging further I found quite a few (40+:) L1s and eggs.  Eggs and smallish L1 larvae were in clumps of substrate about the size of a large cherry that was tightly packed by the female during oviposition, so it was not very difficult finding them :)  Some clumps had not just one larvae/eggs inside (please see photos below). I was surprised how big the egg of this rhinoceros beetle is; the fresh laid egg was about 3-4 mm long which then expand to about 5 mm ball. The remaining female was placed into another smallish container, hopefully she will lay a few more eggs.

Left: substrate clump (2.5 cm size) with L1 larvae ; center and right- two newly hatched L1 larvae discovered in the clump:)

From left to right: freshly laid egg, egg that about to hatch, newly hatched L1, and older L1. Same head size confirms that bigger larva is still in L1 stage. 

You can also contact me via beetlesaspets@gmail.com regarding any related issue and availability of beetles.

Prosopocoilus bison breeding report

I recently obtained a few of these beautiful beetles, so I tried to breed them. The male can reach 60 mm, females are smaller (see photo below). Just a few observations which you may find helpful. As for food they were feeding well on the home-made jelly for stag beetles, that I use for all my beetles. You can find this recipe in the topic below. (http://beetlesaspets.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/jelly-for-tropical-beetles-at-home.html)  They also seem to prefer the jelly to ripe fruits, such as grape, banana or sweet clementine.  They stayed active at temperatures between 19-25C. I kept a male together with the females;  the male was not aggressive towards the females. The interesting thing about these beetles, is that they regularly played dead when I opened the beetle enclosure and they could stay like that for minutes, and often upside down:) So you have to be very careful not to "discard" the live beetle, thinking that it has died. As an egg laying substrate I used decayed softwood chunks and logs from various deciduous trees. The females of prosopocoilus bison seemed to prefer a softer wood for the egg-laying, much softer than one which is preferred by the females of rainbow stag beetles (phalacrognathus muelleri). 

Prosopocoilus bison  pair;

male left, female right.

Few pieces of bark were also  placed in the enclosure as hiding places for the male.  Interestingly, females did not do much wood boring: the eggs were deposited into small gaps and holes close to the surface of the wood chunks. I observed female depositing eggs in a container with clear plastic sides. Female made a shallow hole/"incision" in the wood chunk and then deposited an egg. Female often did not bother covering such holes, sometimes just pushing  a little amount of softwood around it. Some L1 larvae  were also found in the substrate (garden soil mixed with mulched wood). I am not sure whether the eggs were deposited in the substrate, or just fell out of the wood chunks. Unlike some of my other stags, prosopocoilus bison larvae did not get too excited:) when I transferred them into the individual containers filled with original wood and fermented oak sawdust and initially preferred to keep chewing the original wood rather than the treated oak flakes. Only a few of them switched to the fermented sawdust right away. Would be interesting to see what size males I will get on my fermented flakes and whether these flakes are any good for the prosopocoilus bison larvae. 

Jelly for the tropical beetles at home (includes recipe)

It is a massively disputable issue what is the best food for exotic beetles. During my beetle breeding experience I found that beetles are interested in some food more than others.  Sweet, well-ripened fruits could serve as a healthy meal for some beetles. However, knowing what kind of food is the best for your beetles, could be important for maintaining their activity and for a prolonging the life of imagos.  Some cetoniidae, such as large tropical mecynhorynha will live well on ripe banana, other, such as stag beetles will prefer more watery food.  A commercially available jelly for beetles could be a good option at some point of your beetle breeding experience, however, if you have massive numbers of active adult imagos, it could be quite expensive to support  all of them using such food.  Using ripe fruit all the time is also not a great option; firstly they go off  instantly, and secondly you must have them "in stock" all the time.  Plus they may attract a lots of fruit flies, particularly in the summertime. I found it most convenient to use home-made jelly as a fruit substitute, and supplementing beetles' diet  from time to time with fresh ripened fruits, such as sharon fruit, grape or banana. I also believe that most of the stag beetles have relatively short lives and their digestive system is not well-developed. That's why they may require mainly watery food. Currently I am using a jelly recipe which I slightly modified from recipe found somewhere on the internet. I am using agar-agar as a jelling agent, it is available on ebay; it's cheap and will cost pennies per substantial amount of jelly. Agar agar is obtained from algae, in contrast to common jelling agent gelatin that obtained from animal tissues.  I never tried to replace agar with gelatin, but I believe that it is possible.   

For my jelly  (about 350 ml in total) 

I use following ingredients:

1) 1 ripe banana, mashed

2) 40 g dark brown sugar

3) 1 teaspoon of honey

4) 1/4 teaspoon of agar-agar

for stag beetles or 1/2 teaspoon of agar for cetoniidae and dynastinae

(agar could be of different strength, so you may need to determine it's amount by yourself)

5) 250 ml of water

Combine all ingredients in one pan, bring it to boil on small gas, boil for 1 min and pour it into a jar.   It can be stored in the jar in a fridge for weeks and has beetle container life from 3 to 5 days. I spoon it into plastic milk bottle cups and feed it to my beetles like that. If you feel that the jelly consistency is a little hard for your beetles, you can put a few drops of warm sugary water on the top of the jelly, it will make it much softer and watery in minutes. 

To see more photos of beetles, please visit my flickr page at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/radio_ga_ga/?details=1

You can also contact me via beetlesaspets@gmail.com regarding any related issue and availability of beetles.

Sexing flower beetle (cetoniidae) larvae

Sexing flower beetle (cetoniidae) larvae, such as mecynorrhina ugandensis, protaetia or goliathus is not very difficult, however, requires some practice. It is much easier when larvae are reaching their third (L3 stage). In smaller larvae, such as at their L2 larval stage, finding the "right spot" is quite difficult because of their size and because of their mobility:  small larvae are normally very active:) With some practice anyone can do it. Determining the sex of the larvae by the size of its head capsule is not reliable, simply because the smaller larvae of the same age will have the smaller head capsule, irrespectively whether it's male or female.  It is best to see it in larvae which are clean of dirt and debris. On the bottom (ventral) side approximately in the middle of the last abdomenal segment in males of cetoniidae there is a small black slit/spot which is a part of  such-called "Harold's organ" (please see the photo of the L3 male larvae of the Mecynorrhina ugandensis, on the left). The spot may often look like as a hair root spot, apart there would not be any hair growing from it. The bigger larva is the bigger the size of the spot will be. That's why it is more easier to determine the sex of bigger larvae, which also normally less mobile than smaller larvae. Females (photo on right) do not have such black spot.