Goodbye worms

Today I passed off the worms to someone else, but just to cap off my week here is a summary of my observations.

It turns out that mealworms are pretty hardy. They survived several freezing bike rides bouncing around in a plastic bag and a few days where I was gone the entire day and didn't check on them. I was sure they were dead, and so was surprised when I opened the lid and saw they had been eating and pooping and growing.

They don't seem to move very much, but that may be because I am only home when it is dark outside and cold in the apartment. Yesterday I got home a little earlier than usual and the sun was still up so I put the worms in the light. They started to move around and seemed to respond to the warmth and the light. I had them in class today as well which was bright and somewhat noisy. They were a lot more active there than normal. They seem to go into a dormant state when it is cold and dark, maybe as a survival technique.

A few of them have shed their skin, which supposedly happens a few times before they pupate. The next person should watch to see if they pupate

I Got Worms

J. Kevan Haslam (JK)

I GOT WORMS
Day 1: Today I went looking for an animal for our science case study I was a little bit disappointed that I could not get a hissing cockroach so I settled for meal worms. When I bought a cup of worms I was a little bit disappointed because I thought that they would be big and cool like fishing worms was I wrong they are small and white and look like maggots. They also really don’t move around much either. So when I got home I tucked them away in the fridge.
Day 2: I went back to the fridge and tried to make the worms a new home. So I got one of my roommate tuber ware bowls and gave them a nice new place to live. Then I decided to get them a little bit of food so I looked around my place and found a nice red apple to feed my new pet ( I said to myself what worm does not like apples). So I cut up the apple and put it in the bowl for the worms to feast on.
Day 3: I woke up and noticed that I had a lot of the worms were dead and they have not even touched the nice apple that I gave them to eat.
Day 4: I came home from school and looked at my project and even more of the worms were dead. I am beginning to think that I am doing something wrong with all of the worms that I have lost in the past few days. I also pulled out the dry apple that the worms had not even touched and replaced it with a slice of potato. I hope this works much better.
Day 5: I check out my worms before I went to bed and almost all of them were dead! I keep thinking that I am doing something wrong because more of the worms are dead than are alive.
Day 6: I need to buy more worms I hope this batch goes better than the last one.
Day 7: I am now passing the worms on to a group member I hope they have better luck than I did.

Day 1 with the mealworms

So, when I got the meal worms today it was clear they were not exactly thriving, so I did some googling and found a good website with info on raising mealworms: http://mealwormstore.com/index.php. Mealworms have 4 stages:egg, larvae, pupa, and beetle. Ours are larvae. They do fine in a container with holes in the lid and a bed of some kind of grain and piece of carrot or apple to provide moisture. Right now they are in wheat bran which can be their bedding and their food. I put an apple piece in which is where they drink from. When I first got them they were hardly moving and seemed to be almost dead, so I poked holes in the lid thinking that would help. They didn't really perk up though. When I read about providing moisture I immediately cut a piece of apple and stuck it in and they seem to be reviving and clustering around the apple. As soon as our larvae pupate we need to move them to separate containers so the larvae don't eat the pupae. It may still be a while before they pupate, but you should look online at pictures of what they look like when they do.

Bedding and apple should be changed about once a week.
That's my update for now