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They're adapted to hovering while feeding and usually look for white, trumpet-shaped flowers. In the lab I work in, we use cups suspended on a test tube holder with white wicks for them to feed from. If they have no room to fly, you will have a hard time getting them to feed. You can try...

First make sure that it's grain mites you're allergic to and not the mealworms themselves. Fragmented mealworm exoskeletons and dry frass can also be an allergen. Grain mites look like dust, but if you watch for a few seconds, you'll notice that the dust is moving. Also check to see if you're...

Grain mites will feed on the grain products you're providing the mealworms, they are irritating in large numbers since they will crawl all over other invertebrates and hitch rides on them, they can take advantage of recently molted and injured invertebrates when there are enough of them, and...

Do your mealworms have a grain mite infestation? Grain mites can be a severe allergen and are very common with mealworm cultures.

Some air dry clays dissolve in contact with water or release noxious fumes and chemicals. I would avoid using them. Acrylic paint should be fine to use.

It's male. You can tell by looking at the protrusions on the underside of the abdomen. A female only has six.

That is the ovipositor of the wax moth, not a parasite. Insects have segmented bodies and each segment is controlled by ganglia instead of the brain. The brain is for processing stimuli and coordinating complex behaviors, but things like moving legs, mating, and laying eggs do not always...

Your orchid mantis is a female. Damage often takes more than one molt to fully repair itself--especially if it occurs close to an impending molt. Eye damage is unfortunately unlikely to fully repair itself. Eyes are delicate and complex structures and do not regenerate well, if at all...

It got some sort of infection and it slowly spread throughout her head. There's unfortunately nothing you can do about something like that once it's started.

Although they prefer flying prey, they can and do feed on crawling prey. I have both species and feed my mantises roaches--I can tell you that crawling prey is not ignored. I have also experienced cannibalism in both species. Some will grow faster than the others and will prey on the smaller...

Great communication and fast shipping. Mantises were healthy and well-packaged.

That's a male and you're looking at his genitals that he no longer has control over. He's probably dying of old age.

I've been able to get males to maturity within about a month and a half and females to maturity after a little over two months. The males could probably have matured much faster if I had fed them the maximum amount of food they would be willing to take at every feeding and if they were kept...

Juvenile mantises do not get obese. They eat until they can eat no more and then prepare to molt. If you are referring to what I think you're referring to, what you're seeing is the flexible and stretchy part of the exoskeleton between the hardened, sclerotized plates that becomes visible as the...

I found them to be pretty aggressive feeders that would take prey almost as large as themselves, but mine were kept individually.

If they are stressed out by being near each other, they won't eat.

If it is a wild-caught grasshopper, be aware that mantises can become hosts to Nematomorpha from ingesting unhatched eggs that a grasshopper has eaten.

I have not been able to sex Deroplatys truncata reliably at L3. The females look like the males at that point even when you're counting the abdominal sternites.

I had a good purchase experience. Great communication--took time out of his day to contact me despite the time difference and my unavailability during the day. He shipped quickly and the mantises were well-packaged and arrived healthy--minus some cannibalism that was offset by extras he sent.

That's a pretty big ootheca. If she's mated, it might be fertile. Incubation can be done by keeping it at the same conditions as the adults--maybe a little more humid if you're keeping the adults dry. Mine have hatched after about a month at room temperature.