Mites in the Meal Worm Bin II

I wanted to provide an update on my mite infestation of my mealworms that I wrote about here.  This situation came about due to my increasing the humidity in my meal worm bin (as I had too dry of conditions prior and had die offs). Though the mealworms were happy, happy, happy it allowed for a mite population outbreak among all of my mealworm containers, despite my irradiating all of the bedding prior to putting it in. 

My strategy of divide an conquer combined with reducing humidity levels, seems to be working. I was reluctant to throw them all out and start over as I had come so far in my 1st generation cultivation and winter is coming.  I've abandoned temporarily my 3 drawer self sifting system for a setup to deal with my original occupants (beetles and worms) affected by this infestation.

I have four containers now since discovering the RAGING INFESTATION (mites covering everything to include outside the container like a large army) as follows:

  • Mite-infested beetle container 1:  this is my original beetle container.  They will be left to continue their life cycle. Mite infestation is greatly contained from original proportions, but still probematic.  Anything sifted from here goes to....
  • Mite-infested incubator container 2:  This contains (a) beetle siftings of eggs/frass (I no longer have my self sifting bin set up for this infestation) and (b) siftings from my worm bin (frass and tiny, tiny worms).  While tempting to just throw this out, there are so many worms/eggs in this mix, I just don't want to destroy them.  However, this container really has a mite problem. I wipe down the inside/outside of the container to remove the mites, and keep it away from my other two less infested bins.
  • Mite-infested worm container 3:  This contains worms of all sizes that don't fall through my fine mesh sifter in to #2.  I have a gold mine here, and I am keen on preserving them.  The mite infestation is mostly contained here largely because the sifting causes mites to fall out and stay in #2.
  • Clean container 4.  This container is in my office, away from the infested container.  I created this container from the occupants of #2 (worms and pupae).  I picked out the larger worms; washed them in a fine mesh strainer (dunked in water, rinsed off quickly with room temp water, and put on an absorbent towel).  There were NO ill effects to my worm friends.  Not one died, nor did they seem too disturbed by the process.
    • Worms will go to pupae stage and pupae from #2 are given same wash, rinse and dry and placed here.  Eventually, this bin will be all beetles, and will be placed in the self sifting bin.  
    • This bin will be the genesis of the 2nd generation, mite-free colony.


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