08/15/2026
For everyone. Please make sure you have back up feeders in separate areas this will save your tail if you happen to break out in a mite issue.
I moved my bugs from one unit to another. I do have more bugs in another location and some at my home I never keep them altogether. Thankfully. Tonight when I was gathering stuff for expo not the bugs, but other stuff I noticed my mealworms and crickets now have mites. I haven't dealt with mites since 2019, and it's a disaster and where I learned to keep everything separated, and always keep back ups, and back ups to your back ups. I'm glad I do that, because I would be royally screwed. Now this is my fault as I didn't treat my last mealworm batch with a mite protection, and the place I moved them to was just built, so it's all new stuff in the building and of course that can carry mites, and with no barrier this could happen. Well now I have treatment on its way $80 later, and I now have to get new bins and get ready for a huge mess clean up. Now this is most of my mealworms, but not all I have 2 shoe box tubs at my house, and 1 cart in another unit, but this is roughly 26 carts of mealworms I have to deal with. I won't have to start over, but I will have to treat, and move and clean everything to new bins, and none of these mealworms will be able to be used. They will have to hatch out, and breed and these 26 carts will be out of service for at least 6 months. Thankfully I don't have many mealworm buyers right now. My roaches, and Peanut Beetles, and super worms are in a total different location, but those bins will be being treated as a preventative precaution.
Please note nothing I have sold to anyone has come from these bins, and are safe for use. However my mealworms will not be being sold until I get more going. Neither are crickets as I don't think they will survive the treatment anyway. The mealworms barely make it usually as I have to drop the humidity,and not feed for awhile. I am going to look into another method for crickets with dermested Beetles, or Spring tails.
