Dermestid Beetles
Hello!
Curious about our colony? We’re excited to share! There are quite a few ways to clean bones, we use primarily our dermestid colony and would love to talk about why.
So lets talk about the bugs! Dermestids are commonly called flesh eating beetles, skin bugs, leather beetles, hide bugs or carpet beetles. Did you know there are approximately 700 species world wide? They also vary in size, from 1-12 mm, so not very large! Dermestids only feast upon dead flesh, and therefor will not bite their human handlers. This also makes them harmless if you have any escapees. These bugs are also super easy to take care of. They require a wide range of temp, from 60-80 degrees Fahrenheit, above 85 and your bugs will be able to take flight. Keep them under 80 to keep their feet on the bones. Adult bugs will lay eggs that hatch in about 4 days. These little babies will take about 5 weeks to grow from the size of a pin head until they are large enough to burrow into their substrate (we use Styrofoam) where they then will spend about a week before emerging as a beetle. Thus begins the 5 month life cycle again. We love to keep our colony well fed and large. We feed our bugs meat directly out of the freezer, so they get food and their weekly water intake.
Some artists prefer to boil their meat off the bone, some macerate and others like ourselves use beetles. We chose dermestids because the methods of boiling can cause your bones to become weak and break. We also don’t like to macerate often because of the overwhelming odor. Kudos to artists who chose those other tools. We keep our colony in an old chest freezer that we converted into an enclosure. We have an air intake fan, and a temp control switch that activates the fan if it gets too toasty, and also turns on a heat lamp if it gets too cold! We also have a large carbon filter attached that the air pushes the smells into, so our colony is virtually odorless unless opened. Our colony works hard, and has been able to clean a coyote leg in 3 days, and a fetal pig in 1. Another reason we chose to convert an old chest freezer was to prevent things like flys and mites from invading our colony. We had started our colony in a tub and boy, that did not turn out well for us. However some people will keep smaller colonies in glass aquariums and totes with great success. the freezer also supplies them with complete darkness, which is what these guys love.
If you have any other questions, feel free to send us an email!
If you are looking to start your own colony and need help, or BUGS please reach out to us !!
