Dermestid beetles, also known as ‘flesh eating beetles’, are incredible helpers when it comes to removing flesh from bone. For more information about them, check out the FAQ section.

These are available in 3 different options - a booster pack, a starter colony, and a bulk pack.

The booster pack contains at least 150 (usually a fair few more) mixed stage larvae and adult beetles and a little chunk of food to keep them fed in transit. They’ll likely have bred by the time they arrive!

The starter colony contains the same pack of beetles as the booster pack, as well as a container for the colony to live in and all the substrates needed to take care of them. An instructional care sheet is also included with the colony so that you have all the info needed on hand.
The colony container is approximately 20cm x 20cm x 30cm, with tapering at the bottom for a total of 9L volume. It will happily support up to 1200 beetles, and when thriving should easily clean a mouse skeleton overnight.

The bulk pack contains 1000 mixed beetles and larvae, and is recommended for someone who is using a custom built fridge set up and is ready to clean like a madman. Great for rapidly getting a large scale colony off the ground in a short time period, or for colony recovery after a disaster or colony collapse. This option may not always be available, if you can’t select it from the drop down menu please contact me directly and if I can fill the order I’ll let you know!

For anyone curious, I estimate the number of beetles by weight. Approximately 20 late stage larvae weigh 1g, as do 24 adult beetles. Using the largest larval stage as a gauge, 7.5g of mixed stage larvae and beetles will have at a bare minimum 150 individuals. Over winter, during the months of reduced breeding, this is usually pretty accurate. However over summer when there is a lot more breeding happening, 7.5g could easily be 300-400 if there are lots of young larvae in the mix.

I’m sure I don’t need to mention this but just to be sure, I can only ship these to Australian addresses, as sending live beetles internationally is unlikely to be successful, and very probably a biohazard concern :P