Maple Syrup Feeding: I'm a newbie

Orin,

In your book page 13 in the same paragraph you do saw "A better food than fruit, which increases the life expectancy of the adults is watered down (1:1) real maple syrup placed in a little dish with paper towels."

Above I provided the nutritional information for maple syrup, 0% of protein, 0% of amino acids, 0% of vitamins c, d, a, e, k, b 6, folate and b12.

Kingdom of Beetle Taiwan also adds sugar, fructose , seaweed extract, amino acids, citric acid, and sodium citrate to their beetle jelly.

Please let me understand the logic of how maple syrup is better nutrition than this beetle jelly.

 
Sap feeders don't use the extra nutrients. Consider, if you add extra nutrients to hummingbird food it can harm them if they don't ignore it. More is not always better.

 
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Orin,

Why would you feed the beetles a taro flavored fruit jelly if you know it does not have any added nutrients?

You also state on page 13 in the same paragraph "beetle jellys made to feed beetles can be useful but recent formulations include protein and other additives that can encourage severe mite infestations and have no proven benefit to the beetles."

If you look above you will see vitamin c, amino acids, and protein are proven to be essencial to adult beetles. That is from scientific research. These are the facts.

 
There are many different types of beetles that feed on a wide range of items and there is very little specific research. No scientist would extrapolate the dietary needs of one beetle out to all members of the order. Consider how much research has gone into understanding human dietary requirements and yet various details related to the dietary needs of humans are still debated by scientists today.

 
Orin,

I guess that you disagree with Dr. Allen Carson Cohen's 30 years of research on artificial diets and diet delivery systems.

 
There are lots of debates by scientists, such as most believe in the earth being 4.5 billion years old while some believe it is less than 7 thousand years. The geological evidence shows the age to be 4.5 billion years old, creationist scientists ignore the evidence due to their religious faith. Scientific facts are not debatable, they have been proven through the scientific method. If some scientists refuse the evidence because of their personal beliefs, that is not science.

 
LarvaHunter said:
There are lots of debates by scientists, such as most believe in the earth being 4.5 billion years old while some believe it is less than 7 thousand years. The geological evidence shows the age to be 4.5 billion years old, creationist scientists ignore the evidence due to their religious faith. Scientific facts are not debatable, they have been proven through the scientific method. If some scientists refuse the evidence because of their personal beliefs, that is not science.
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We're talking about nutrition, do you have Dr. Cohen's work on Dynastes? I did not know he worked with that genus.
 
LarvaHunter said:
There are lots of debates by scientists, such as most believe in the earth being 4.5 billion years old while some believe it is less than 7 thousand years. The geological evidence shows the age to be 4.5 billion years old, creationist scientists ignore the evidence due to their religious faith. Scientific facts are not debatable, they have been proven through the scientific method. If some scientists refuse the evidence because of their personal beliefs, that is not science.
Click to expand...
Not to offend you but recent studies done by scientists show that earth might not actually be 4.5 billion years ago. You'll have to google it to find out more about it since I am not too familiar about those discoveries.

 
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Orin,

You can google Dr. Cohen's research and his 5 patents on artificial insect diets. He states that certain nutrients are essential to all insects not just one species.

 
Lucanus,

I am not offended, Please let me know how old the earth is according to these studies? How old do you think dinosaurs are?

 
That is not what I said. They can survive and live on sap. But the extra nutrients added are proven in his scientific experiments to be optimal for their health and desease prevention. humans and animals can survive on bread and water but they will not be as healthy as the ones that are fed complete meals with essential amino acids and vitamins.

 
Survival seems harsh and unnecessary in a controlled environment. Why not have them thrive?

 
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Okay, I just ordered some beetle jelly from Japan. We'll keep them on syrup and fruit treats until then. How often should the maple syrup soaked towel be changed?

 
I assume the D. granti in this topic were wild caught, but even if they weren't the following should all generally apply. Couple points I'd like to make in this conversation though I've not personally done any hard research on Dynastes granti. Some things are intuitive or common sense though.

1. Wild caught D. granti only live a month or two at most in captivity.

2. The quickest killer is for them to dry out due to improper containers (too much ventilation/lack of humidity), in my experience. In these cases liquid diets are very beneficial and they do relish sugary liquids (they slurp them right up). I use watered down brown sugar and have even used hummingbird feeder liquid too. It all works to keep these very short-lived beetles alive and in my personal experiments, beetle jellies (even the ones from Taiwan) vs. fruit feeding vs. sugary liquids do neither affect the short adult lives of these beetles nor benefit them in any observable way, like number of eggs laid.

3. I might guess that they do the majority of essential feeding in that very long (2 year) larval phase, incorporating essential nutrients into their bodies during that time. I believe that many other short-lived (adult) insects simply use sugary liquids as a basis for energy/fuel and hydration, like moths, crane flies, etc.

All three feeding methods work in my opinion because the adult D. granti only seems to need this food for fuel. That's not to say that Japanese hobbyists haven't captive bred D. granti that live much longer lives due to superior care through both that critical 2 year larval phase and the adult phase, but then again that kind of captive breeding program is well outside my personal area of expertise. However, I do know that Orin has been successively and successfully breeding D. tityus for at least five years before I ever sold D. granti to the Japanese (before 9/11)
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I will have to get that insect science food book. It sounds wonderful. I do wonder if its value may have been misapplied in this thread, however. A very interesting discussion, though!

Oh, and lose the paper towel in the liquid. I just drop the beetles' mouths right into the liquid though I use smallish, shallow lids as bowls. They'll just sit there and start drinking immediately in most cases.

 
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