Search the Community

What is an inexpensive, lightweight method to insulate roaches during shipping in winter? I want to avoid using a heat pad, as I heard they are heavy and sometimes will cause the box to overheat. Any suggestions?

OK, so I'm not exactly new to the invert world, and have done my fair share of packing and receiving roaches, centipedes, millipedes, tarantulas, and scorpions... I recently had an issue with receiving a large lot of A. tesselata that included several gravid adult females, and wondered if anyone else had had similar experiences. First of all, the packing job was *ok*... I generally frown on shipping inverts in cups with loose substrate (shipping millis or other sub-terrestrial inverts in a FULL cup of substrate is ok), and most of these roaches came in 8oz deli cups with loose substrate accompanying them. This means they were getting banged around a lot, so I'm sure that didn't help. Regardless, it wasn't enough to "squish" them or anything, and ALL 50+ nymphs were fine. However, there were three gravid adult females that just simply stopped moving in the following two days after I received them. They looked like they were having seizures or something similar... kind of a loss of motor control and spasms when they tried to move. And then they just stopped moving, stone dead. All adult males are fine, and two of the other gravid adult females are fine as well. Is this species especially sensitive to shipping stress? Does their being gravid affect their sensitivity to a greater level? Has anyone noticed shipping sensitivity in other large-bodied adult roaches (B. giganteus, B. fusca, B. colloseus, etc.)?

Just doing some further research on both federal and state laws for shipping different species of roaches. If anyone can offer help - I am just trying to verify what species are legal to ship to what states, etc. I am aware of Florida's laws, but that is about it. On the USDA website - I can't really find specifics (and don't want to assume they are treated the same as a cricket and are OK to ship). Are certain species considered agricultural pests, but others not ? Are there certain ones that are 100% legal to ship to every state (take out Hawaii) ? How about other states' laws specific to what can be shipped in ? Any specifics to the state websites and federal websites would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Scott