Chrysina woodi is a beautiful jewel scarab living in West Texas, the large emerald green beetles sports beautiful blue tarsi, that only adds to its beauty.
This is a very prolific species. After a hard few days collecting, I managed to collect 4 pairs, with 2 pairs sent to my friend Alan Jeon and keeping 2 pairs to myself. One of the females passed within 1 week of collection, and the other one lived for over a month. Over the course of breeding, the female laid 122 eggs, all of which hatched.
They like lucanid grade flake soil, rather than very fermented substrate. They were bred in a medium critter keeper, which can only hold around 1 gallon of substrate, and all eggs were deposited in one go.
Chrysina seems to like very high ventilation, and lives a lot longer in high ventilation settings.
Adults were fed the leaves of hickory, and took to it readily. They should also take walnut and pecan.
This species takes around 6 months to become adults, which is incredibly short. They need red clay to pupate, which is not too hard to acquire, and they do best when kept solitarily. Sadly, they seem very rare in the hobby, I have not seen other breeders of this species.
