Young Mainer here!

[Lankster]

Hello to this community from Maine!

I’ve been interested in owning my dream beetle, Dorcus Hopei Hopei, for quite some time. I’m just getting into my freshmen year of collage, so I have time to figure things out.

I’ve been around, doing my own research and asking around. I found this site and decided to give it a try.

I am extremely new to the bug-keeping community

Where are y’all getting these beetles from? How? What are your secrets?
Sources keep telling me to get an exotic pet license and hope for the best, that my request will almost definitely be denied.
This cant be it? It cant be that hopeless can it? It’s not like I’m looking to breed or anything.

How do I even start?

 

[Eduardo]

Greetings! I think most of the trouble arises with distributing the beetles across states, but it certainly is a very debated topic amongst hobbyists. Most if not all of us here have no license, but it isn’t really a problem as long as we don’t distribute them (?) Again, this is a very obscure topic, and I’m pretty sure several states such as California legalized their distribution state wide… at some point to some extent. It’s sort of a gray area for now, as I interpret. As for Hopei, it’s not very easy to get in the States but I’m pretty sure James Beetle Farm had some.