Rice Flour Beetle Media Recipe
(we sell it if you don't want to bother with making it)

2 parts whole wheat flour (strain the bran)

2 parts of regular flour

1 part of Brewers yeast (health store)

Blend the yeast to powder, and strain it and the whole wheat flour before mixing. This is so the mixture will all sift clean when you harvest.

• Strainers like the one pictured.
  
• One or more plastic bowls to sift into.
  
• A large funnel - you can get big ones at autostores
  
• Plastic shoe boxes lids
  

  

We used to use Snapple bottles filled one-half to two thirds of the way with mixture. However we now use plastic shoe boxes. You can use almost any type of container, just determine whether the beetles can get out before you set it aside. There needs to be some ventilation and the shoe boxes are far from air tight, so they provide sufficient ventilation to culture in

Now, you have to play around a little with your timing (your local temp and humidity will impact development), but sometime between one and two weeks after you have started new cultures you should be able to strain those cultures and remove the beetles, the following week you can strain them again and recover only larvae.  If you make multiple cultures then you can setup a cycle where you move the beetles from one culture to the next one every week and harvest the larva the following week.

If your timing gets off or if you forget and end up with a mixture of both larva and beetles, you can do the following to seperate them;

Quickly strain all the cultures with the beetles and larvae to get rid of the media and then put them back in a strainer, the larvae and small beetles will squirm their way through, leaving behind the mature beetles and the larvae that have begun to pupate(?). Place a second stainer of the same type (Target-kitchen section) under the first, they spoon together nicely. Now, mostly larvae will emerge from the second stainer, so I let it set on a counter and periodically check and collect the larvae during that day. If you use a spoon you can easily collect the beetles that are climbing on the mesh of the strainers and begin to put them back into your culture bottles while waiting for the larvae to strain.

You can also place the larva and beetles in a mason jar (again, after sifting off the media), set the mason jar in an empty shoe box and hang one or more strips of cloth down to the bottom of the jar and out and over the side. I make the strips long so there is enough to hang down inside, and then enough on the out side to place one end under the jar. Most of the beetles will climb out via the cloth strips, leaving the larva behind at the bottom of the jar.

It really comes down to timing. Once you figure it out you will be able to harvest only larvae from your cultures while the beetles are laying eggs in your second one. It seems to me that there is about a one week window in which you can harvest the larvae before they start to pupate. This is after the beetles have been removed for at least one week.

Also, one word of warning - the larvae need to be kept dry. We don't have any trouble raising them in the naturally dry air of Arizona, but keep them away from a lot of direct moisture.