About Us
Growing up I would often accompany my parents on summer trips to Japan. I was always fascinated by living creatures and kept my share of bugs, snakes, and lizards as a child. It was in Japan, however, that I got hooked on beetles. What I saw there blew me away! I had never seen such large, beautiful beetles with magnificent horns, colors, and mandibles! I would often run around the Japanese countryside where my grandparents lived hunting for beetles.
One day, a friend in the neighborhood gave me a huge white grub. I was a bit put off because it didn't look anything like the magnificent creatures that I was used to hunting. He explained to me that this humble grub would someday become a big kabutomushi (Japanese Rhinoceros Beetle)! Not knowing anything about raising such a creature, we went to a pet store and purchased some flake soil to keep the grub in. A month or two later a pupa appeared in place of my white grub. Not long after that I was looking in the container, and to my delight, I caught my first glimpse of an adult kabutomushi! I was hooked.
Years went by. I grew up and often was reminded of those wonderful experiences I had as a child. When I had children of my own I had the opportunity to share some of those experiences when we visited family in Japan. A few years ago, after returning from a trip to Japan I started looking online to try to find some of these magnificent creatures I kept as a kid but to no avail. Finally, after a few years of periodic online searching I found a few online shops selling exactly the kind of beetles I grew up loving! Not only that, but they had many more species of stag beetles and rhino beetles that I could only dream of having as a kid. That was my gateway into being reintroduced to the hobby after so many years. During this time I joined a few Discord servers and gained a ton of knowledge from friends and fellow hobbyists that eventually led me to breeding beetles.
Since beetle keeping isn't a mainstream hobby in the United States I found it difficult to find the same resources that are so easy to find in Japan. I had to learn how to make quality flake soil, how to make or buy the proper food, set up enclosures and so many other details that are integral to successful beetle keeping and breeding. Acquiring the products from overseas or even sourcing products from local stores and online was a bit of work and oftentimes like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack. I would've loved to just go to one place to get all the "stuff" I needed to keep beetles. Noticing a lack of such a resource, I decided to open this website and help provide all the products that I found that helped me along the way. Everything that I carry are items that I use for my own personal beetle rearing and is the best that I've discovered for keeping, raising, and breeding beetles. Many of the items can be found and purchased in local stores but for items that are not readily available I've collected a good quantity to have in stock. Or, if you just want to pick up everything at once I don't think there is a store in the US that carries all the items that are in stock on this site to help you raise your beetles successfully. Hopefully, you'll find all that you need here to experience the same joy and fun times without the headache of asking around or searching for products locally or internationally.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or join us at the Coleoptera Corner Discord server that a few friends and I launched to learn more and get connected. Thank you for your support!
- AKI
A Kabutomushi I caught in Nerima, Tokyo, Japan several years ago.