Experimenting with rove beetle control

[Jay Blair]

Rove beetles while benefiting the conversion to compost of the organic wastes and staying confined within my bins also prove to be a pain when shovel aerating or harvesting the finished compost.

I am now beginning test lab studies to devise the most efficient and cost effective means of seperating the fast scuttling insects from my bins so I dont have to kill them in the final processing of my castings and can use them to amend other bins or possibly sell them to gardeners lacking them in their soils.

As I make my milestone successes and failures, I will be sharing them here.

Anyone here have suggestions or questions that I can consider?

[Jay Blair]

A search of potential non insecticide control on the web did not yield anything as both gardener compost enthusiastss and overzealous confinement bin worm farms only tout the benefits of the beetles with no discussion of what is over population in a worm bin.

However while reading poted text on the TAMU site , I learned that in addition to aiding in decomposition of decaying wastes by the worms, rove beetles are partial to vegetables that have not completed the initial stages of decomposition and also are a predator to slugs.

With this information I am making some traps with slits only large enough for the flat beetle to pass through without larger worms being to get through them.

My first experimental rove beetle bait trap will be filled with carrots and peas. perhaps the initial heating of the vegetables will repel hatchling worms while attracting the rove beetles.

Due to our extended drought here, slugs and garden snails are not evident even around the moist areas where my air conditioner condensation accumulates. The last slugs I saw here was in early April.

As the rove beetles are a slug predator and my bins have no slugs, I am thinking that if I trap some inside the rove beetle slit trap and bury the trap in the bedding that the beetles may identify the slugs as an environmental attack and enter the trap more readily to prey on the slugs.

But due to the drought here, the slug bait concept will have to wait until wetter weather or I can figure out a slug trapping technique utilizing the artificial moisture environment of my A/C units and possibly sewage drain field.