Opening a box of feeders and finding them motionless is an unpleasant few minutes, and it is also the moment people make the situation harder to sort out. This guide covers what is useful to do in the first hour: how to tell dead from dormant, and what is worth writing down and photographing while it is still in front of you. It does not replace the terms that apply to your order, which are in the live arrival guarantee on our shipping page. One of those terms shapes everything below: a claim needs clear photos or video of the dead bugs, emailed within 1 hour of delivery or pickup.
First, check they are actually dead
This is not a formality. It is the single most common misreading of a live-insect delivery, particularly in winter.
Insects are ectotherms. Cooled past their critical thermal minimum, they lose the coordination to stand or grip and enter chill coma: completely still, unresponsive to touch, and indistinguishable from dead by eye. Insects in chill coma recover movement as they warm back up, and that recovery takes real time rather than happening the moment the air warms.
What that means on your counter is that a still container is not a verdict. Photograph or film it first and, if bugs look dead, send the claim within 1 hour of delivery or pickup. Then give it a few hours at ordinary room temperature before deciding what is really lost. Do not accelerate it with a heat mat, a lamp or a radiator, which warms one side of the container far faster than the other. An ordinary room is the correct tool.
What actually indicates death
- No response after several hours at room temperature. Time is the real test. Everything else is a supporting signal.
- Discoloration. Darkening or blackening in crickets and roaches, or worms turning dark and slack rather than pale and firm.
- Odor. A dead-insect smell is distinctive and does not develop in dormant animals.
- Texture. Dead feeders go limp or brittle. Mealworms and superworms that are firm and occasionally curl are alive.
A roach on its back is frequently still alive, and a cricket that has not moved in ten minutes very often is too. Sort the container after the waiting period, not during it.
Photograph it before you disturb it
Photographs cost nothing and cannot be taken retrospectively. Across live-animal purchases generally, people find it useful to have a record of the shipment as it was found, taken in a sensible order:
- The unopened box as delivered, with the label readable and the seal visible.
- Any damage to the outside: crushing, tears, damp patches.
- The box opened, contents undisturbed, before anything is lifted out.
- The primary container as found, wide enough to show the whole thing.
- A closer frame of the contents, in good light.
- The thermal element, if there was one, and its condition.
Photographs carry a timestamp automatically, which is generally more useful than any note you write afterwards. Take more than you think you need; deleting them later is easy.
If bugs arrived dead, these photos or a video are also what a claim needs, and they have to be emailed within 1 hour of delivery or pickup. The full terms are in our live arrival guarantee.
Note the conditions, not just the count
A count on its own says very little. The circumstances around it explain far more, and they are the details that fade from memory within a day.
- Where the parcel was left and for how long before you got to it.
- The weather at your address that day, and whether the parcel sat in direct sun.
- The state of the box when you touched it: hot, cold, damp, crushed.
- The state of the thermal element: a spent heat pack, a fully melted gel pack, or none at all.
- Condensation inside the primary container.
- How the insects were distributed: piled in one corner, evenly spread, or packed at the bottom.
Those observations tend to point at what went wrong. A cold box with a spent warmer and a long tracking gap is a different story from a hot box that sat in the sun for four hours after delivery. Our guides on how live insects are shipped and heat packs and cold packs explain what each of those elements was supposed to be doing.
Keep the survivors alive while you sort it out
Whatever else happens, the living insects in the container are still on a clock. Separate them from the dead as soon as you have your photographs.
Dead insects left in with living ones are not a neutral presence. In a damp, poorly ventilated container they drive ammonia and mold, and in crickets in particular that turns a partial loss into a total one over the following day or two. Get the survivors into clean, ventilated housing with surface area and no standing water, and take the dead out. Dubia roaches and worms are more tolerant of a messy container, but the same principle holds. Our dubia roach care guide covers the bin to move roaches into.
The full unpacking sequence, including what to offer and how long to wait before feeding any of them out, is in what to do when your feeders arrive.
Why losses happen at all
It is worth being straightforward about this. A shipping container is a temporary environment with a fixed budget of heat, air and moisture, and the journey through a parcel network is not a controlled one. Delays happen, weather along a route is not predictable a week out, and a parcel spends part of its life in buildings and vehicles that are not climate controlled.
Some of it is species. Crickets are genuinely the most fragile feeder in common use, and a cricket order and a roach order sent the same day through the same weather do not carry the same risk. If a bad delivery has you rethinking, the feeder range includes options that handle transit better, and our guide on summer and winter shipping covers which conditions cause which failures.
Some of it is the last leg, which is the part nearest your control. A parcel that survives a thousand miles and then sits in a closed mailbox in July has been lost at the very end.
The live arrival terms in short
This page is a guide to the first hour, and nothing in it changes any term of sale. The terms are on our shipping page. In short: open the box as soon as it arrives. If bugs arrive dead, email clear photos or video within 1 hour of delivery or pickup. A qualifying claim gets one free resend. A claim qualifies when the box was received on the first delivery attempt, or picked up the same day from a hold-for-pickup location. It does not cover a box left outside, a late pickup, a wrong address, or carrier problems outside our control. We do not take returns of live insects or give cash refunds on them.
The shipping page also covers when orders ship and where we ship, and our contact page covers how to get in touch. Read the shipping page before you act on anything here.