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Cowpea Beetles (Callosobruchus maculatus)

The Cowpea Beetle (Callosobruchus maculatus) is a small 2-3mm hard-bodied Bruchid Beetle suitable for feeding some small Amphibians such as Dendrobatids and small Bufonids. They are a very cheap and easy item to culture are explosive breeders and require very little maintenance so are a handy thing to have on the shelf even if it's just in case you ever run out of fruit flies.

For your culture you will need a plastic pint cup, 2 paper towels, an elastic band, black eye beans & a starter culture:

Put 300-400 black eye beans in the base of your cup, for those of you that don't want to count out the beans it works out at roughly 4fl.oz.:

Fold a sheet of paper towel 4 times and place into the cup:

Add approximately 50 beetles from your starter culture:

Put a sheet of paper towel over the top of the cup and secure with an elastic band:

Place your culture somewhere warm such as on top of a heated terrarium, at room temperature the culture cycle can take a couple of months so this extra warmth helps speed things up a touch.

The beetles lay their eggs on the black eye beans, these can be seen as small white dots stuck to the outside of the beans:

On hatching the larvae tunnel down and develop inside the bean before emerging as an adult beetle, you can see which beans have been home to larvae by the round hole they leave:

These are explosive breeders producing several hundred beetles in each generation from a start of just 50 beetles, each culture can be home to up to 3 generations before you need to replace the beans. Be warned that these beetles can fly.

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