The choice of the perfect place when breeding superworms is essential for the good result of this project. The ideal set is a closed and very warm room. A sub roof room or a small concrete and bricks shed are perfect. The place has to be insulated with wooden or styrofoam panels and has to have an heating system keeping the temperature around 24/25 degrees.
Once you’ve started, every 3 months you will have a new generation to raise and treasure.
So prepare the room with shelves and boxes to organize the work like in an assembly line.
Life Cycle
The first step in this business is to buy a big quantity of Zophobas morio larvae. Then there is the most difficult phase: choose the best larvae and apply a special alchemy to generate the pupae.
Zophobas morio larvae need the human action to make this transformation.
The pupae (also called mums) are conserved in plastic tanks on a wheat bran bedding with some diced carrots or zucchini.
That provides food and water to the breeding. From the naissance of the pupae (easily detectable thanks to its curled shape and light color) to its transformation into insect-mother it will pass about 30 days.
After 40 days the mums will deposit their first eggs, the real richness of the farm. After 50/55 days you will have to move the adult insects in another box, there they will start a new cycle.
After removing the mums, you will notice many minuscule eggs under the wheat, sometimes stuck with a sticky substance.
Now you just have to put those boxes away and wait for the growth of a new generation. After another 30 days the small eggs are mature, also thanks to the nutrient wheat and food in the box.
They are now superworms. With a length of about 1.5/2 cm they are ready for the molt and they will shortly become fishing baits. That happens every 2/3 weeks.
The white Zophobas morio larvae/ Superworm
After 3/4 molts and 3 months your larvae are now 4/5 cm long.
This is the right period to choose the different larvae that will become pupae and start a new life cycle.To do this operation you need to sieve the boxes every hour and find the white larvae. They are ready to be used as baits.
You need to do it hourly because there are thousands of larvae and every 2/3 weeks each larvae leaves its old shell and grows up. During this transformation the superworm becomes white. And this color only lasts for 1 hour. Every hour you will find new ready worms.
In order to satisfy market demand, every day the farmers spend 4/6 hours during the day and 4/6 hours at night looking for ready worms.
Preservation
The only secret to preserve the superworms white is to stop their molt. In this way you will prevent them from becoming dark again. In order to do it you have to select the white larvae and put them in a plastic or glass box, in this case the farmer is using screw cap test tubes.
After that fill the containers with some water and seal them.
The larvae will drown immediately and will be preserved intact, white and soft for 3/4 days. The farmers who produce a great number of baits usually add some natural and non-toxic preservatives to their containers in order to make the baits last longer and have more time for preparation.
Superworms are now ready to be hooked, but pay attention: in you breeding there are many new generations which are ready to be selected and many things to do.
Once you start the cycle it is like an assembly line and you will have to dedicate a lot of time for the worms production and hygiene to avoid illness and virus.
If you want to begin this business you have to know that it is an hard work, and that you will have to spend many hours looking after your larvae and worms.
But in the end your satisfaction will be huge.
Good luck.