Who is using dermestid beetles to clean skulls? I was wondering how well they work and how it is to maintain a colony of them. Also, how hard are they to contain. There are several sellers on ebay and I wondered if anybody had experience with the different sellers.
I doubt if this is posted in the right spot so feel free to move it wherever you think is best.

I hear they work great.
I am doing two skulls, I chose to boil clean worked fine.
I got some 12% peroxide from a hair salon to do the bleaching.

xx

Trapper,
I have had a colony of dermestids for about six years now and do dozens of skulls a year ranging from small furbearers up through deer and bear to moose, elk and bison.

They do an amazing job stripping the tissue off a skull. Quick too. When I have colony running hard they will strip a bear or deer skull in a day and a bison in a week.

The rate they clean a skull depends on the way you prep the skull and, of course, the size of the colony. Currently, my colony is in an old chest freezer. This works great. It is insulated to keep the temperature inside consistent, and it is big enough to have room for a big skull. I have had mine in various sizes of Rubbermaid tubs too. These work well because they can't climb the smooth sides. If the sides get scratched though, they will try to climb out.

There is a lot to learn to keep them thriving, but I find them fascinating, and I did not have a thing for bugs before I got them.


I don't know about any of the internet sellers. I actually got mine for free from a museum. I have heard university biology departments sometimes keep them for specimen preparation. It might be worthwhile checking that out.

It doesn't take many to become a fair sized colony in a rather short time.

If you want more information I can answer many of your questions. PM me.

Canis what do you feed them when they aint eating meat off a skull?

Here is a couple pics of my skull boiled clean and dry
pre-bleaching.
Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

xx

XX,
Your question is the most common one I am asked.
That was a concern for me initially but finding enough food for them to eat is rarely a problem for me.
I do custom cleaning services for a couple of taxidermists and they supply me with a steady stream (sometimes a flood) of skulls for cleaning. By the time I finish the spring bears, the fall seasons are starting. As that winds down, spring is approaching.
If it looks like I will run out, I turn down the temperature which slows down their metabolism. They eat less and they take longer to cycle through their life stages so the reproduction is slower.
I had a steep learning curve after getting them but I have learned to manipulate their environment for maximum efficiency when it is necessary and slow them down when I need to as well.

Thanks for the info Canis. I can pm you if you would rather but I suspect there are a few people here that are interested in this topic so here are a couple more questions:
How cold can they get before they die? I have read freezing, but will say 40deg. do them in?
How often do you clean out the freezer you have them in and how much of a hassle is it?
By the way, in the little bit of research I have done so far dry dog food was recommended for feeding them if you don't have a skull.

I have never tested them to see how much cold they can tolerate. In my resaerch I learned there are about 300 species of dermestids in Canada so they must be able to take it, but that might be only certain stages that survive. I keep my colony at about 75 to 80 deg, F.

They tend to build up a fair bit of waste in the bottom of their home. I clean it out a couple times a year.
It isn't too big a hassle. I put an empty rubbermaid tub inside and only have a couple skulls available to them. Over a few days, I sweep off those on the skulls into the tub where they have more food available. As most of them get transferred, I put a thin cardboard box (like a cereal box) inside with the food on it. They crawl in to eat and are easier to move before the run away. In a few days they are pretty much all moved. I then scoop out the frass and dump it.

I have never used anything but meat to feed them.

Another question or two and I will try not to bug you (pun intended) much more.
What do you use for a heat source in the freezer?
What do you use for bedding? (I was thinking heat and bedding could be a fire hazard.)
Do you have to worry about the teeth falling out like the boiling methods?
Thanks for all the great info, I really appreciate it!

I got a question canis

Are the bugs in a larva stage when the are eating meat?
and if so what do the turn into as an adult?

and what would happen if one got loose in the house and crawled into
my ear? Click to view attachment

xx

I don't mind answering your questions guys. We are all friends here.
I have heard of some guys using a heat lamp but I use a water bed heater. It is a rigid type rather than the rubber mat type. I have it hanging on the back-side (hinge-side) of the freezer so it doesn't get covered with frass. It radiates heat very nicely and has a thermostat for temperature control.

I generally don't use any bedding material. After I clean out their enclosure, I generally keep them in a RM tub for a while and the frass builds up in there again. After a while I dump it into the freezer again and they spread it around over the entire area. Also, with no heat lamp, the fire hazard is reduced. It seems they like to work best in the dark too (imagine a carcass in the wild) so I keep it dark and warm.

Some teeth are more prone to falling out than others but, in general, the tissue holding the teeth in place is not consumed very fast. By the time the teeth become loose the rest of the skull is clean. If you leave it in for a long time, they will loosen the teeth but this isn't a problem if you pay attention to the progress.




These insects go though several stages in their lifecycle.
Egg for 3 to 7 days before hatching into the larvae.
Larvae are about as big as this "!" when they hatch. They go through several instars as larvae. This is where they grow, shed their skin, and grow some more etc. About six or seven instars eventually reaching about 1/8" diameter and 1/2" long. This is the stage when they eat the most. In this stage they look like little brown caterpillars with short hair. At the end of the larval stage they pupate. This can be compared to the cocoon of a caterpillar before it become a butterfly.
They pupate for about a week then emerge as the adult beetle. This is a black hard-backed beetle about 1/4 or 5/16" long. They can fly but rarely do in a well fed captive colony. The adults actually do eat quite a bit but their main thought is breeding and egg laying.

I have had a few escapees (clinging on to a skull when I remove it). I have heard they will eat the skin off any mounts in your house. I don't know about this for sure. I had a few get on a stretched dried beaver hide that was of no value and they did eat only a few more tiny holes in it but it wasn't damaged much worse than it was before they got to it. Large numbers of them though will eat all the skin and there will only be a pile of hair left.

As for your ear...I can't say anyone has asked me that before. If you find out let me know.


Edits for typos

For what its worth here's my 2 cents worth. I used to keep a large dermestid colony in a small concrete outbuilding to clean skulls and skeletons. I learned about it from museum folks at the cal academy and smithsonian. Most museum work is with small skulls, but I was doing big stuff. We always kept a light bulb going in the cabinets to keep it warm, and covered the skulls with cotton batting, like blankets. I started my dermetic colony back east with dermestids from road kill set aside in the woods. There are a lot of carrion beetles in several families, but the dermestids are easy to identify and pretty much look alike. We also used to soak skulls in ammonia water if the larvae didn't like the meat for some reason.

Some of the nicest skulls I've seen were prepared by maceration--soaking the skull in a plastic bucket of water during warm weather. Removes the eye balls and brains. I usually start them in boiling water. You can pour in some ammonia to degrease the bones too. The meat digests and sloughs off, and the skulls come out beautiful. This isn't good for immature skulls because the sutures will separate. And the downside is that maceration attracts predators and scavengers. You gotta lock them up. Oh yes, almost forgot, wives don't get off on this activity within a mile of the house.

my brother bought some but they stay at my houuse but i have a question how often do u water them?