Virginia Cheeseman Blog

All go this week, I have had lots of new bugs come in. Some lovely Giant Prickly stick insects, a new species of cockroach and then yesterday I went to collect some magnificent Atlas and Rhinoceros beetles. A friend of mine imported some of these beetles several years ago and I did very well breeding them. The beetles are captive bred in Indonesia where they are reared for 'beetle fights', evidently beetle fighting is a popular pastime in some Asian countries. Certainly not my cup of tea but I'm really glad to see these beautiful beetles again. I have far more females than males which I am quite happy about. The males are larger and more impressive, with huge horns but it's the females that lay the eggs! I have already seen lots of mating. After I had collected the beetles yesterday, I then had to go foraging in the woods for leaf litter and rotten wood. The things I do for these animals! I took my wheelbarrow and loaded it up with the most rotten bits of Oak that I cou...

I have certainly knuckled down and focussed on my work this week. The school holidays are well and truly over. All items on my daily and weekly 'tick list' have been completed, I am at last catching up and feel good, if not more than a little shattered. It is a constant job to keep all my little friends, fed, watered and clean. Our kitchen is forever full of boxes, jam jars and cages either needing to be washed or dried. At the moment I have a kitchen top covered in plastic sweet jars. I was really pleased to get my hands on them, after the recent takeover of the traditional sweet shop that has saved them for me over several years. Since the takeover I hadn't received a single jar but the new owners were good to their word and saved a sack load for me this week. I desperately need the jars to post off my 'bulk buy' cockroach and stick insect offers. Cockroaches have been selling particularly well this month but stick insect sales have been pitiful. Come on buy some...

The Olympics and Paralympics are finally over, it was great fun but now I need to knuckle down and sort out my bug business. I was away so much last week that this week has been absolutely crazy. Firstly last week we had a family day out on the Wednesday before my nephew's children went back to school the following day, Thursday was unfortunately my lovely next door neighbour's funeral and Friday/Saturday my daughter and I were up in London at the Paralympics courtesy of my Cadbury competition win. This week has been far less eventful but just as busy. I can't spend too long writing this blog as I have a mountain of emails to answer, phone calls to make, bugs to feed and lots of cockroaches to count and pack. I have a customer coming over to collect them at lunch time. It takes ages to sort out 200 Hissing cockroaches, 50 Cuban Burrowing cockroaches and a few tubs of various species. It is certainly good to be busy again! I cannot believe how poor my sales were during July...