easy breeding for waxworms

For those who have small species that enjoy flying prey or those of you who feed silkworms and the like to your spiders,I have found an easy way to breed lots of waxworm larvae and moths.

I start with a large mason jar,in the bottom I mix multigrain baby cereal with honey,bee pollen,spirulina,and sometimes a bit of alfalfa powder into a crumbly,flackey mix that sticks well together.I use about 2'' total substarte and the babyceral should compose about 6/8 of the totla amount of solids.I typically grind or blenderize my bee pollen into dust to me sure it is evenly distributed and available to be eaten by the waxworms.I order my waxworms from www.wormman.com and place about 50 in each jar with a crumple bit of wax paper or papertowel.I cover the jar with old T-shirt or painters cloth,b/c the larvae can climb glass and with wriggle through cheesecloth or chew throught papertowels...it also maintains the media's moisture level.I sit my jars out of sunlight in a room that stays areoung 75F and let the worms eat and pupate.You can feed off about 2/3 of the worms and still wind up with more than enought to pupate and become moths.I remove dead worms as best as I can fromt he cultures and just let the culture sit.About 3 weeks after you see your first moths inside the jar,you will get a rush of worm of small size.These will turn into moths in a few weeks.I usually end up seperating the new worms out to nes jars of media,b/c they quickly consume the old media.I have been breeding the worms for my lizards and it is very easy and economical....everyhting being easily bought at a super Walmart.Happy worming!!!

The problem with waxworms as feeders is that they are incredibly fatty, and cannot be used as the main portion of any animal's diet.

Mushroom Spore said:

The problem with waxworms as feeders is that they are incredibly fatty, and cannot be used as the main portion of any animal's diet.

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welll.... apparently the herp world is pretty aware of the nutritional requirements of their various pets (or are total saps) based on inference of all the supplements available and books on nut and what not


but in tarantula world we have no real clue. we really can't even safely say that a high fat diet is bad for a tarantula.


further, the adult form of the wax worms would have drastically less fat, ratiotically. that really should be a word. oh well.





to the orginal poster... let me get this straight... you can raise multiple generations of wax worms? have adults make eggs that hatch and all?
how much would like, all that stuff cost and how much edible substrate would that make, and how many like, worms and moths would that produce (rough guesstimates. i have no idea what most of the components would cost)

For subadult and adult reptiles,I do not advise using ANY larval food item as more than 30% of the total diet.This includes silkworms,hornworms,mealworms,waxworms,trevoworms,and superworms...to name a few.For younger herps and I am sure tarantulas,you can be more liberal as more calories are being usied for growth and less will be deposited as fat around the liver.

In regards to cost and number of worms/moths produced:
cost for 1doz mason jars:$8
honey:$3-6
baby cereal:$3
bee pollen:$6
spirulina:$6

This is an estimation and I tend to have this stuff around anyway as gut load for my other prey species(roaches and sometimes crickets).
You can get inumerable worms out of just a little of the above ingredients and keep the chain going as long as you'd like.I had well over the number of worms I could use in just two jars and I have lots of hungry herps that eat them.You can get as many moths...just depends on how many larvae you feed out.Easily 400 worms per single jar of substrate.

dang, that's pretty sweet. i love to give waxworms as a postmolt meal.

i think i might know what my next bug project is

this is pretty good information, shouldnt this be a sticky?

you don't need to put the jar in sunlight to keep it warm... the larvae themselves generate a TON of heat all on their own as they burrow through and eat the substrate diet. The one time I tried raising some up... I had a glass mason jar (gallon size) and after having let it sit for a week on a shelf I went to check on it. I picked the jar up and almost dropped it man it was hot to the touch. BTW.. it's recommended that you use glass jars because the larvae apparently can bore/chew through thin plastic jars after a while. I don't like the moth phase of it all.. too much 'moth dust' from them battering their wings around and the moths stink to some degree as well...but the treefrogs loved them LOL. I never got around to getting a second generation of waxworms lol.

I just started Meal & Super Worms at the moment. But depending on how it goes with the sworms I will prob stop mworms. It's really pretty cool keeping them. And hardly any work.