The Insects Nest, Luodong, Taiwan

[alandmor]

A colleague and I recently had the opportunity to visit the Insects Nest, the beetle shop of Andy Cheng in Luodong, Taiwan.  I'd never been to a beetle, or any kind of insect shop before and came away very impressed.  The unassuming store front houses a bright showroom filled with shelves upon shelves of tupperware with live beetles, insect displays, beetle rearing supplies and several insect cabinets of beetles.  He focuses primarily on Lucanidae, Dynastinae, and Goliathini, all groups which are popular and often kept as pets in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. He currently has ca. 150 species in stock. Venturing to the back of the shop, one finds several rearing rooms stocked floor to ceiling with tupperware of adults, and larvae in various stages of development.  Individual rooms are kept at different temperatures depending on the requirements of their inhabitants.  Holding a mature Goliath beetle grub in your hand is certainly very impressive!  He has an industrial sized mixer for making up bags of flake soil used in beetle rearing and boxes of beetle jelly for feeding adults.  Andy has also travelled to Ghana several times in search of live Goliathus cacicus and Goliathus regius.  He also offers his services as a guide for insect collectors and we spent two very pleasant weeks with Andy and another colleague, and covered much of Taiwan looking primarily for Cetoniinae, termites, scorpionflies and the occasional butterfly.  His wife Andrea is also in a couple of the pictures.  Anyone wishing to contact Andy can do so at finidi@ms37.hinet.net.

[Trehopr1]

What a marvelous trip and such nice gracious hosts.
Wonderful experience....
Thank you kindly for the photographs and the commentary about what one might see there !

[Chuck]

That's awesome! What a great place to visit.

It's a shame we can't do this in USA (for the most part.)

[KKarns]

Wonderful pictures and what a great facility, appreciate you sharing this.