Insect appreciation thread - You WILL love the bugs

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Favorite insect order

  • Thysanura (silverfish)

    Votes: 1 0.6%

  • Odonata (dragonflies)

    Votes: 27 17.2%

  • Ephemeroptera (mayflies)

    Votes: 1 0.6%

  • Blattodea (roaches and termites)

    Votes: 2 1.3%

  • Mantodea (mantis)

    Votes: 25 15.9%

  • Orthoptera (crickets, katydids, locusts etc.)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Dermaptera (earwigs)

    Votes: 3 1.9%

  • Phasmatodea (stick and leaf insects)

    Votes: 2 1.3%

  • Hemiptera (true bugs and cicadas)

    Votes: 7 4.5%

  • Psocodea (bark lice and true lice)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Siphonaptera (fleas)

    Votes: 1 0.6%

  • Mecoptera (scorpionflies)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Trichoptera (caddisflies)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths)

    Votes: 24 15.3%

  • Diptera (flies and mosquitoes)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Thysanoptera (thrips)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Hymenoptera (wasps, sawflies, bees and ants)

    Votes: 31 19.7%

  • Coleoptera (beetles)

    Votes: 29 18.5%

  • Neuroptera (lacewings)

    Votes: 1 0.6%

  • Other

    Votes: 3 1.9%
  • Total voters
    157
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Termites apparently swarmed this morning. Unfortunately, I missed much of it and those that I caught are not forming pairs. There will likely be more in the coming days though.
 
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Crex Crex said:
Possibly months. And that's if I can get a colony going in the first place.
There's actually been another swarm (and there probably will be more) so I am trying to get more breeding pairs to maximise my chances.
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How many breeding pairs do you think you'll need? Will one of the females become a queen if it works?

I don't know much about termites or caring for them despite being roach-pilled.
 
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Android raptor said:
How many breeding pairs do you think you'll need? Will one of the females become a queen if it works?

I don't know much about termites or caring for them despite being roach-pilled.
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Any mated pair can become a king and queen. The problem is getting them to found colonies successfully: not much is known about the exact requirements of termites and there are few people who keep colonies started from alates. I am trying to go off what I've found about rearing subterranean termites (which is what I have here) in a lab.
It does not help that my species (Reticulitermes lucifugus) seems to be understudied compared to it's more economically important american relatives. Allegedly, my local population of this species also has primary reproductives that are unable to found colonies outside captivity.

I am trying to bag as many alates as possible in order to have spare royal couples and also test out several methods and setups to rear them. I am waiting for them to swarm out of a felled pine in my garden which essentially seems to be their stronghold, as that swarm is always fucking huge. These past couple of days, they've just had small flights from under a nearby bush.
In any case, termite development appears to be very protracted as the eggs hatch in months.
 
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I used to live out in the Sonoran Desert, and the native Blonde Tarantula was abundant.

They would come out at night, and one particular male would come out of his burrow and stroll up to the patio table as we were enjoying the evening and a few beers. A friend taught me the basics of their behavior and handling them. Once you get past their sheer size and the initial fear of a really big spider, they're actually quite tolerant of human interactions. That same male would come out every night from a nearby rock pile burrow and readily crawl up onto your open palm and just sit there as you lifted him up. Cool stuff.

They also kept the bark scorpion and cricket population in check, a definite bonus.
 
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Android raptor said:
How do you collect pairs and get them in tubes? Other than very carefully I assume.
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You throw the alates in a box and wait. After a while, couples form in which one or multiple males closely tandem-run behind a female. You collect the female and one of the males (I scoop them with a sheet of paper) and put them in the test tube, which is easy to do because they can't scale glass or plastic. The alates are somewhat sturdier than the workers, so if you're gentle enough you could pick them up barehanded (don't recommend it). There will probably be another small swarm tomorrow so I can collect one last couple.

BTW if you are interested in roaches and live near appalachia or the West coast, you could try looking for Cryptocercus wood roaches. They are the closest relatives of termites, and live in family units of a mated pair and their dependent offspring (which resemble worker termites). They sound like they'd be fun to keep, but they don't live in my country.
 
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Crex Crex said:
You throw the alates in a box and wait. After a while, couples form in which one or multiple males closely tandem-run behind a female. You collect the female and one of the males (I scoop them with a sheet of paper) and put them in the test tube, which is easy to do because they can't scale glass or plastic. The alates are somewhat sturdier than the workers, so if you're gentle enough you could pick them up barehanded (don't recommend it). There will probably be another small swarm tomorrow so I can collect one last couple.

BTW if you are interested in roaches and live near appalachia or the West coast, you could try looking for Cryptocercus wood roaches. They are the closest relatives of termites, and live in family units of a mated pair and their dependent offspring (which resemble worker termites). They sound like they'd be fun to keep, but they don't live in my country.
Click to expand...
Cryptocercus sound really interesting, and look a lot like Rhino roaches. It sounds like they are tricky to care for though, since it looks like no one has been able to breed them successfully in captivity.

I don't know if they range as south as metro Atlanta, but if I'm ever in good habitat for them I'll look for them.
 
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Is the little space in the tube the only place they have access to now? How do you feed them? How will you know when they are ready to go to a bigger space?

The roaches I have are easy, termites seem very complicated in comparison.
 
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