Best way to keep bee moths alive ?
Hello, I'm new here, great site!!! Glad to find it. My first post- What's the best way to keep bee moths alive for the longest time ? :confused: Fridge or a 68* basement in the dark ? Best temp. ? Anything to add to make them last longer ? I ask because I can get a 500 pack for $9 and if I can make them last all season it would be worth it. -Thanks, and again great site !!! :)
Keeping waxworms (bee moth larvae)
We buy 500 or 1000 waxworms and super rmealies from Grubco at a time. Crappie fishing has been slow this year, so I'll wait a while before ordering more waxies, but the ones we bought this spring lasted until last month. We keep them in the fruit cellar, where it's pretty cool. The key (and I've been doing this for about three years) is to pick through them every week to remove the dead. Waxies get gooey when they decay and contaminate the rest. They do shrink in size over time, but are okay to use for tipping jigs.
The mealworms stay in their muslin bag in the fridge. I also pick through them and put the dead or dying out for the birds. Mealworms just dry up, so they still have food value for birds. I've been using these mainly for sunfish and they're almost as good as crickets.
Now it's that time of year when we're picking critters off the vegetable plants and collecting those stalk borers that Crappiepappy told us about a few years ago. Can't beat free bait. To whoever it was that asked, around here waxworms go for about $2.50/30 in a cup. - Roberta