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My saga with the H. major nymphs continues. All got moved to their individual deli cups, and seem to be feeding - insofar as I can tell. I'd like to hear from people who've actually bred this species. Again, they seem particularly highly strung, and during the daytime, "punch" the melanogaster...

Maybe the fact that they are such aggressive feeders makes them this nervous! Going to have to put in yet another deli cup order...

Guess it's time to split them up. Are they unusual in being particularly nervous? Have any experience with this species in particular? thanks.

I had three H. major ooths, one hatched and the others were seemingly bad...all three kept in the same conditions. If that wasn't disappointing enough, the nymphs are skizzy little things, very nervous, and after a week now are still afraid of melanogaster. One issue is that they are all 30 or...

Maybe monofilament fishing line to tie off the sticks?  Are we talking tongue depressor type sticks or just "sticks"? I have both...

Hi Thomas, OK, I'll try to start another thread when I get back from fieldwork next week. In the meantime, thoughts, questions, possible lines of inquiry, methods, references, possible contacts for parasitology-oriented entomologists, etc much appreciated. I'm completely uninterested in the...

Thanks very much for this important info, Maybe a video would be a good idea as well.  Do you think that there are any ways to secure material on the screen onto which the females are more likely to deposit their ooths than on to the screen itself? Almost wondering if it'd be worth it to secure...

How about a shorter question: How do you safely remove ooths attached to metal screen?

There are several issues that I've already started to notice that I'm wondering are related to inbreeding depression from a lack of new lines being brought in from wild stock. One, all of my mantis populations are very male-heavy. My latest round of G. gogylodes are 90% males. Might be temps or...

What happened to this project? I thought it was an excellent idea...and I went to contribute some photos but the links are all dead...

My violin mantises matured and I now have a whole bunch of males and only a few females. It's been amusing to a point to watch the males punching the out of each other and knocking each other off their respective perches. I was worried however that none of them were going to be acceptable to the...

That's just nuts. But it's been a strange year. I got a bunch of ff colonies from Josh's and they were filled with disgustingness, brought black mold and some bacteria that sours the cultures and makes them smell like all the demons in heck ate beans, beer and cabbage. First year in 20 years of...

Hey Teamonger - has your inside setup been described somewhere in full? What do you feed your larvae or do you just start with late stage larvae and let them pupate? My system starts with compost and soured chicken mash to attract wild adult BSFs...but I haven't figured out how to keep them...

I just had another thought, but in order to test this hypothesis I'd need to do some serious lab work. Being in Albuquerque, land of a million roaches ( in turn supporting an unbelievable number of black widow spiders) they get into the  BSF bins. Depending on what taxonomic school you belong...

Thanks for all your responses, but several issues stand out: The only species experiencing die offs are the H. majuscula. We have the opposite problem with humidity  here - I have to struggle to keep it high enough for species from the humid tropics. I keep everything clean. I'm not a complete...

I was initially thrilled to have a bumper crop of BSFs this year, and have been experimentally feeding the adults to a few of my more "expendable" species. Thinks were going well but lately I've had some die-offs of H. majuscula. Their abdomens are visibly black, then they fall off their perches...

Do you start out with purchased larvae, or lure in adults to lay eggs? I have three "biopod" type containers...and have found that some years they crank like crazy and other years, like this one (very, very hot) the adults are few and far between.

I will note that the B. mendica are looking pretty fat and happy since starting on the bean beetles, finished off quite a few of them...this after they were looking a bit weak on fruit flies. Perhaps this bears further investigation. I would imagine that dryland species are going to be less hung...

Orin - I don't know - it was on the list...sounds like nonsense to me, having raised these for fish and caudate food for years. the list isn't mine...

Brine shrimp? What? My collection is more limited than I'd like it to be, after doing a bit more research I gave the bean beetles a shot. So far, they were a hit with my few L4 B. mendica. L4/5 P. paradoxa, accepted them, then spun them around almost Harlem Globetrotter style looking for a soft...