Rearing and Handling of Diabrotica balteata

Abstract

The first report of mass rearing the banded cucumber beetle, Diabrotica balteata LeConte, was by Pitre and Kantack (1962). Their methods enabled investigators to produce a few thousand larvae per week but were too laborious for producing larger numbers. In 1968, Cuthbert et al. developed a more practical method, for rearing the banded cucumber beetle for pheromone studies, that permitted the production of up to 50,000 adults per week. The procedure described here uses the techniques developed by Cuthbert et al. (1968).