TLDR: I have a state issued license to collect insects (butterflies and beetles mostly). I wish to one day sell them to people within my state. I’m currently gathering funds to purchase a couple grow lights to help grow hosts for the insects to eat. For each donation, after a period of time, I will donate the equivalent in the form of insect kits to local schools in my area. Think of how silkworms were reared in schools sometimes. Finally, I took a pause in all of this due to some urgent medical issues. My original gofundme was uploaded in September of last year.
Hello, I am Cecile Quintanilla and I really enjoy pet insects :D
One day I had a thought and wondered if it is possible to actually keep more native insects to your area. While I do live in California which has stricter laws I actually did manage to obtain a state insect collection permit through CDFA.
Within this license I will mostly focus on collecting Lepidopterans, Beetles, and most interestingly, a species of solitary and also stingless bee.
My goal is to have a small business selling native insects. While currently I will only sell to California residents only, if it goes well, I may try to expand to other states. I would do this by helping some out of state friends to obtain a similar permit within their state gov, then helping them collect insects.
How these insects will be kept depends on the type of insect,
Lepidopterans: are best kept as pets when they are caterpillars, and then either kept in large enclosures or released to the wild.
Beetles: can be kept as pets for their entire lifespan
The stingless bee: for more agricultural purposes, they are tiny but will need the largest of enclosures (I will keep them in a room full of plants). Alternatively, if you can get them to nest outside of your home, then they will always return to that nest, until they pass away.
Because these insects are native to California, it is safe to release them. Furthermore, state lines vs geographical distribution can differ. So for each individual species, I will look to see if they are native to that part of California before selling them. For example, if an insect is native only to Socal, I will not sell them to someone in the Klamath regions of California (Norcal).
The main obstacle to this idea right now is the funding, while I have saved up some money, grow lights are surprisingly expensive. Note, I can’t use most grow lights as they can get quite hot in certain regions. For insects that will free roam a room, like lepidopterans or the stingless bee, this could be detrimental to them. Therefore I have to buy the safer, but more expensive, grow lights.
I currently need around 800 in funding, with most of that going to the grow lights, things like plant seeds and substrate are included but are far cheaper.
While I know that times are quite weird right now, any quantity of money will help towards this goal. I understand that times are quite uncertain right now, if you can only give a dollar, that's okay. If you can only share this post, that is okay too. :D
To compensate for asking for donations, what I plan on doing is, after I have a stable population of insects, to give away some of them to local schools so that they can be raised in the classroom. This would only really include lepidopterans and beetles, as they are the easiest to keep. I would also provide a presentation to that school about the biology of the specific insect I gave to them. Finally, I will provide all the food and the necessary enclosure.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the chat. I also have many questions answered on the gofundme page, which links to a google doc.
Gofundme link: