Talk:Mealworm

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I'm concerned about the "copyright" notice on the bottom, although it does grant permission to redistribute. Fledchen 14:20, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Also the use of "I" and "you" in the care section is jarring and not really appropriate for an encyclopedia.SusanNunes 02:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 nutrition 2 size 3 Mealworms as pests 4 Giant Mealworms

[edit] nutrition

Can these be a useful source of vitamin b12? Sunnan 00:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, they are a source, but very small.Kingalex56 17:05, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] size

I was going to correct the size, then I saw it said -circumference- instead of length. That's about right, but I don't think the size of the adults is right. The one thing I remember about raising mealworms is that the adults are so bizarrely smaller than the larvae.. the mealworms are well over an inch long, while the adult darkling beetles are not even 3/4 of an inch..

[edit] Mealworms as pests

Since mealworms are a common pest, it would be helpful to have information (perhaps external links or links elsewhere in wikipedia) on how to prevent your flour from being infested by mealworms. The current page says that cooked mealworms are edible by humans, but it would also be useful to say whether there is any danger to eating uncooked flour (e.g., cookie dough) that may contain eggs or larvae -- e.g., might they carry (or be) gastrointestinal parasites?

It would also be interesting to know how granaries, millers, bakers and grocers deal with mealworms and similar pests on a larger scale.

[edit] Giant Mealworms

I raised mealworms for a short time and discovered that some of my competitors used a juvenile hormone to increase the length in the larval stage. The juvenile hormone that was recommended to me by a Professor of Entomology to try for this result was a product called Precor 1%, which was primarily developed to exterminate fleas and marketed for the same. I had some degree of success, but was not able to achieve the degree of success that my competitors were able to achieve. Had I been able to employ an entomologist to perfect the process I'm remain certain that I would have eventually been able to match the same results that my competitors had achieved. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.251.11.117 (talk) 23:39, 10 December 2006 (UTC).