Virginia Cheeseman Blog

Settling in and getting organised at last. My hubby took a day off work this week to help me get things better sorted in the new bug room. Although the weather is improving (at last), some of my lower shelves seemed to be getting a bit too cold at night so we have now used more heat mats. The mats are not the problem, I have loads of them from the old bug house but the plugs and thermostatic controls are in short supply. I could never have sorted it out but my clever hubby has managed to use extension leads and solve the problem. I have purchased a fly killing device. It was quite expensive but worth every penny, I am absolutely fed up with fruit flies everywhere. I have lots of millipedes and fruit beetles at the moment so the flies just keep breeding in their cages. One of the great things about giving up Praying Mantids a couple of years ago, was that I no longer needed to keep flies of any sort. Fruit flies are bad enough but Blue Bottles are a nightmare and they make such a mess...

This Wednesday was the first day that I actually felt I could see the 'light at the end of the tunnel'. The last few weeks have truly been exhausting. We had to move the bugs into their new room over Easter, for lots of reasons but the main one being my husband and I only had the time then. However the freezing weather and the fact that it was the first week of the month made it the worst time possible. The first week of every month is always the busiest for sales and April has been the busiest month of the year by far. Finally things are beginning to settle. I am starting to get the cages and boxes better laid out and therefore it is easier to find everything. The room is far smaller but it is so much easier to pop in and out, rather than needing to walk to the end of the garden continually. I would love to cut things down a bit but it just isn't possible at the moment. I got some lovely Israeli Gold scorpions this week. It is so long since I last had them that they were...

It will all be worth it in the end, or so I keep telling myself! It has been another very busy week, I don't think we could have picked a worse time of the year to move everything. Since Easter I have been inundated with work, mountains of emails and orders and a multitude of new stock coming in. I received a huge amount of new spiders, scorpions, beetles, millipedes and various other bugs last weekend. I still haven't entered them all onto the website as I need to take photos and write descriptions, I really cannot find the time. Yesterday I received my long awaited order of 50 Giant Train millipedes, they are amazing creatures and by far the most popular pet millipede. Their size makes them truly unique and they also tend to rummage around on the surface rather than just burrow away as most millipedes do. They certainly eat! They prefer fruit and vegetables instead of the usual leaf litter. I always provide them with leaf litter though and deep substrate on the bottom of...

They are in! All the bugs and beasties have been moved into their new bug room. It has been an epic journey and there is still some way to go until I get everything straight. No, it didn't all fit but we have found a place for everything, it just isn't exactly where I would have liked. I have glass tanks almost on the floor because there was literally nowhere else to put them. So much for organising it that everything went together e.g. all millipede boxes on one shelf, all the cockroach species on another shelf, all the spiders together and the scorpions and so on. In reality everything is where we could fit it in. Everything non living is now in my office or the living room, everything previously in my office (all my competition things, magazines, craft boxes, kids toys etc) are now piled up in the living room and dining room. The snakes are staying permanently in the dining room, there was no alternative. My poor hubby is going nuts with the mess and he doesn't like m...