Live Food for Pets - using the prodigiously breeding Bean Weevil


Acanthoscelides obtectus, otherwise known as the Bean
Weevil, is a prodigious breeder and one of the easiest live
foods to raise for many amphibians, including most toads,
dart frogs, tree frogs, and some other amphibians. The Bean
Weevil, however, is not a true weevil but a member of the
seed beetle family. They have a more rounded body shape than
the true weevils, and lack the long snout, but they are
commonly found in seeds and grains just as the granary,
maize and rice weevils, hence the common name.


Raising your own Bean Weevil beetles is basically as simple
as adding beetles to beans and putting the lot into a
plastic box with a screened top for ventilation, then
keeping the lot dry and at a temperature over seventy-seven
degrees Fahrenheit (twenty-five degrees Celsius).


Be careful not to shake the box as you raise your weevils,
or the bouncing beans may kill them. Also make sure that the
beans you choose are food grade and not treated with
chemicals of any kind. And, since the adult beetles don't
eat the beans but feed on flower nectar, you will need to
feed them on sugar water or feed them to your pet within a
week or so of their hatching. If you choose to feed your
adult beetles, put a cotton ball into a small jar lid so
your weevils can drink the sugar water without falling in
and drowning. Bean Weevils can't swim.


The life cycle of seed weevils may be completed in twenty-
one to eighty days depending on the temperature. If the
temperature is warm, they will breed all year in dried
kidney beans, lima beans, lentils or cowpeas. The females
lay their white eggs on the beans, and the tiny, hairy,
legless grubs (larvae) hatch in five to twenty days to
hollow out the bean seed as they grow. In eleven to forty-
two days the larvae pupate, and in five to eighteen days the
adults emerge by cutting one-tenth of an inch round holes in
the bean seed and crawling out.


A dozen or more weevils may emerge from a single bean seed.
When an experiment was done and a single pair of bean
weevils was added to an eighty-seven pound bag of red kidney
beans, in fourteen months two hundred fifty thousand adult
beans were counted from the bag. Needless to say, if you
grow bean beetles in your home for live food for your
amphibians, you'll want to contain them well!


Did you Know?
Discover more Neat things on Invertebrates



Munch on these Stuffed Weevils, Beetles and Bugs