There are about 500 species of stingless bee, found across Australia, Brazil, Central America and Africa. These guys aren’t very big, and their sting is too small and ineffective to do any damage – instead, their defensive mechanisms against humans is to buzz around your ears and annoy you. Aw.  Dig deeper →

When I was small we had a sacred plastic box layered with soil and sand. I would watch in wonderment as the fat worms wriggled down the side of the perspex, greedily digesting the soil and leaving hundreds of intricate lines through the sand, like a map of a river basin. I’ve no idea why we had an earthworm kit; perhaps just for the wonderment. Now though, earthworms have been added to the list of ‘potential new food’; an edible bug that is in theory at least very widely available. Possibly just a few feet away from you, burrowing away in the soil.  Dig deeper →

Searching for earthworm recipes is not the most fruitful enterprise. Turns out though, that if you use the French term – ‘avec ver de terre’ – you have slightly more success! And it sounds really fancy.  Dig deeper →

After some extended experimentation with her team of chefs, Deliento founder Lucy Martin thinks she has the answer. The beetles have a “savoury, slightly salty taste,” she tells BUGSfeed, that goes perfectly with Parmesan – and thus the Parmajune Thin was created.  Dig deeper →

"It got really weird at one point", Jakub Dzamba admits. "When I was sort of... herding them." Dzamba, a Canadian researcher, is describing the point at which he realised the crickets in his experimental farm had personalities. Observing his bugs intensely and making notes on their preferences, the cricket farmer and PhD student noticed that some preferred their own space, while others would follow the herd. He figured out how to encourage the crickets to move somewhere, rather than manually picking them up to transfer. The realisation translates into significantly lower labour costs when farming on a big scale. It's these ingenious tweaks and ideas that give Dzamba's Cricket Reactor impressive results. While standard cricket farms (yes, there are a growing number in this booming industry) have a typical monthly yield of 1 pound of edible cricket per square foot, Dzamba says his model can produce 5 pounds. The initial countertop prototype has been developed into a much larger version, which can come pre-fabricated in a cargo container, or be modified to fit into whatever space you have free.  Dig deeper →

Greater Wax Moths, or Galleria mellonella, are hardy moths whose larvae ('waxworms') eat beeswax and honey, resulting in a lightly sweet but mostly bland flavor, perfect for absorbing other flavors while cooking. Having traveled with their honeybee hosts, they are found practically all over the world.  Scientists theorize that exposure to a wide variety of predators during these travels may explain why wax moths have developed the world’s most extreme hearing. They recognize frequencies up to 300 kHz, while bat sounds are only believed to reach 212 kHz and humans can only hear 20 kHz at best.  Dig deeper →