I tried convincing myself I could figure this out, but I can't. I have two nice beetle colonies that over the past year got large enough to clean a large head in 2-3 days. Six weeks ago I transferred them to an old refrigerator. They did great for two weeks. I ran out of food for one week and put in some dog food and jerky. In the last two weeks I put two bobcat heads in and the bugs haven't touched them much. The bugs are now almost all dead. I see no mites, the temp. has been between 80-100F., and the humidity has been in the 70's. What happened? They were doing so well. I thought I had made all the mistakes already. Any ideas would be appreciated since I have already gone over and over my checklist of troubleshooting.
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Even If one does not boil a skull It still
Is possible to do by hand,once you find a way to seperate both halves It will speed up the process I'm sure
Just bring to a boil If your scared
by hand, but I would rather use the bugs mainly because I never have to worry about cracking, it's less smelly, and customers seem to want bug cleaned skulls more than boiled. I think they feel that it comes out better that way. Anyway, I am cleaning them by hand now, but I would rather get my bugs going again. Thanks for the advice.
trying to save his beetle colony, not the skulls.
Thanks, John
I know a fellow that put the air hose to the small
pore openings to blow out any tendons...It worked good
first you got to seperate both halves
You're right. I am trying to save my beetles.
must eat to live
Finally the mites built up enough for me to see them. Now I have the problem of trying to get rid of mites. Oh, and DW if you read back through my message, you'll find I didn't stop feeding them, I just changed to jerky and dog food for a week or so.