A very busy week

A very busy week. I had a lovely birthday last Sunday but I don't seem to have stopped this week. I have again had lots of new stock arriving and I have ordered yet more for next week. Hopefully I will be getting some Giant Train millipedes at last but I can't get as many as I would like. I had fifty come in before but still I sold out quite quickly. Goodness knows where we are going to put everything when the new bug house (more of a bug room) is ready. It would have been so much easier if we had done it before Christmas, this is such a busy time of year. My hubby is hoping to take a few days off soon and really get on with things. He is off this weekend but there are lots of other things that we need to do. I am desperate to get on top of everything before half term. During the half term week my nephew's kids will be with me for a lot of the time. It will be very difficult to get much work done on top of the usual cleaning and feeding of the bugs.

I have had lots of orders this week and lots of nice feedback in emails and also product reviews. I really appreciate people writing reviews for the website, I'm sure it helps my business. I haven't had any problems in the post for ages, even though it is pretty cold at the moment, my parcels seem to be arriving absolutely fine. The new heat packs that I purchased for this Winter seem much more efficient than the old ones. Lots of customers have reported that they are still warm when their order arrives. I even had a customer in Norway inform me that the heat pack in his order still had some warmth left in it, after several days of travelling.

I am seriously worrying about how everything is going to fit into the new bug room. This just isn't the right time to cut back on livestock. I think we will have to draw a plan and actually work out exactly where things are going to go. I found myself planning this the other morning when I woke up at about 3am! It will be a mammoth job to clean everything, I really hope to eradicate the Pallid cockroaches that I have been trying to get rid of for several years now. They just seem to get in everywhere. Spiders are also something that I would like to leave behind in the old bug house. I obviously don't mean the tarantula kind but the little garden ones that come in on the bramble and breed like crazy in the heat. They make such a mess with their webs getting everywhere.

The bugs are all doing well and many are breeding nicely. I have at last got babies of the Question Mark cockroaches (Therea olegrandjeani). I was delighted when I realised that the egg sacs had hatched. I have had these on and off for years but never before managed to breed them. I think it is important to have a good number of individuals when it comes to breeding certain species of cockroach. I have spoken to other people about this and they have agreed with me. There was a time when I couldn't get the Domino cockroaches breeding but now I have loads and the same with the Green Banana species. I generally have hundreds of Hissing cockroaches but having sold a large number before Christmas my stocks are relatively low. I have decided to keep all the adults for a while until they start producing young. There are many obviously pregnant females so it shouldn't be too long until my tank is heaving with them again. I must sort out my many millipede boxes before the move. It is no easy task sifting through so much substrate in search of tiny millipedes but I cannot simply move all those boxes. I have lots of large, heavy boxes which may only have a dozen or so babies in them. I have also got a bit muddled so I cannot actually be sure which species some of them are. I will have to condense them down into smaller boxes and try and work out what they are as they grow. Some millipedes can be very slow indeed to grow but the African Red Legged millipedes are doing very well. They seem to grow at a good pace and they are selling incredibly well. I thought I had run out at the beginning of the week but when I dug around there were at least another half a dozen.

I just can't wait to get into the new bug room, apart from the space issue all I can see are positives. The doorbell went twice yesterday just as I had got out to the bug house. I had to run in both times (if I don't run it takes too long and whoever was at the door will be gone), once was my weekly delivery of crickets and the other was the postman with my X-Factor tickets (a competition win) that needing signing for. It will be great to just pop next door from my office to check on stock, measure spiders etc. It will be amazing to no longer have to carry buckets of water, piles of boxes and cages up and down the garden constantly. I will have a sink in the new bug room. Oh life will be easier and it will most certainly save on time. I know I am always saying it but it's true - I never have enough time! Yesterday I got up at 6 o'clock, I sorted invoices for the days orders and did general paperwork until 8.30 when I took Teddi for an hour's walk. When I got back I packed up orders and then fed spiders (the ones that didn't get fed the day before because I ran out of time). I then took the parcels to the Post Office and collected Izzy from pre-school. On the way back I collected my daughter's friend and brought her home as she had left her car here the evening before. I forgot to say that I also spent time packing up a delicate item that needed posting for my daughter's boss and took that with me to the Post Office. I tried to eat a cereal bar while walking Teddi but all her friends starting leaping up at me and their owners gave me dirty looks so I had to eat it in the car. After getting lunch for me and Izzy I set up the toys and again started working in my office. At 2.30 Izzy came out to the bug house with me and we tidied up and sprayed everything. It was then time to pick up Katie and Max. They came in ravenous so it was time to make tea and I promised last week to make cakes (why did I say that?). The kids went home soon after and it was time to cook my family's tea and then later tackle a pile of ironing as our daughter is going away to a friend's for the weekend after work today. Just a normal day really!

Did I ever mention that my brilliant web guy managed to sort out bringing over all the delivery addresses from the old site? It was a difficult task but he got there in the end.