Live insects are the one thing you can order where the weather changes the product. The same box, packed the same way, has a different outcome in January than in July. This guide covers what actually changes between the seasons, what the industry does about it, and the part of it you control at your end. It describes the practice generally. What applies to your own order is set out on our shipping page.
The temperature that matters is not the one on your phone
The forecast you check is for your address, in the daytime, outdoors. A parcel of feeders experiences something else entirely: the temperature at the origin when it was packed, the overnight lows at every sorting hub along the route, the inside of an unconditioned trailer, and finally the microclimate of wherever it was left at your door.
A shipment can travel from a mild origin to a mild destination and still spend eight hours somewhere cold in between. It can also arrive on a pleasant 70°F day and then sit for three hours on a south-facing porch, where the box interior goes well past the air temperature. The route and the last hundred feet both count.
This is why the live-animal trade tends to look at a corridor rather than a city, and why a shipment that would have been fine last week may not be fine this week.
Winter: cold kills slowly, which is easy to misread
Insects are ectotherms, and cooling one does not switch it off in a single step. As temperature falls, an insect passes its critical thermal minimum, the point at which it loses the coordination to stand or grip. Below that it goes into chill coma: immobile, unresponsive, and not dead. Insects cooled into chill coma generally recover normal movement once they are warmed back up again.
What kills is duration. Chilling injury accumulates while the insect is cold, separately from the coma itself, and prolonged cold exposure can kill an insect that never actually froze. The practical version is simple: a few hours cold is survivable for most feeders, a long weekend cold is not, and the two look identical through the lid.
Two things follow for anyone receiving a winter delivery. First, a box of motionless insects is not automatically a box of dead insects. Photograph or film them first, because a live arrival claim has to be emailed within 1 hour of delivery or pickup, and then giving them hours at room temperature before making that judgment is the correct move. Second, the risk in winter is much more about delay than about any single cold night. A one-night parcel through a cold snap is a different proposition from the same parcel held over a weekend.
Summer: heat has a much shorter fuse
Heat works faster and is less forgiving. Warming an insect raises its metabolic rate, which raises its oxygen demand and its water loss at exactly the moment it is in a closed container. Warmth plus the moisture the animals themselves produce also gives you condensation, mold and ammonia, all of which move quickly in a hot box.
An insulated box in summer has a further problem: insulation works in both directions. Once heat gets in, the same liner that would have kept cold out now keeps that heat from escaping. A cold pack is a fixed budget of absorbed heat, and once it has melted and equalized, the box has no way back.
The other summer-specific risk is the delivery itself. A parcel left in direct sun, or pushed into a closed metal mailbox, can lose in ninety minutes what the packaging protected across the whole journey. In summer, the last leg is frequently the worst leg.
What changes between the seasons
| Cold weather | Hot weather | |
|---|---|---|
| Thermal element | Air-activated warmer, kept away from the animals | Gel pack, usually tempered rather than hard-frozen |
| Speed of failure | Hours to days | Hours |
| Main enemy | Delay and repeated overnight lows | Sun exposure and a hot final leg |
| Secondary problem | Warmer running out of oxygen or duration | Condensation, mold, ammonia |
| Insulation role | Holds warmth in | Holds ambient heat out, then traps it if it gets in |
| Riskiest moment | Overnight in an unconditioned facility | Between the truck and your door |
The mechanics of both elements are covered in more detail in heat packs and cold packs explained.
Why live shippers pause, reroute or reschedule
Across the live-animal trade it is normal for a seller to hold a shipment when the weather along the route is outside what the packaging can cover, and the usual practice is to hold rather than to dispatch into a severe weather event and pack harder in hope. It is also normal to care about the day of the week, because a parcel that enters the network late in the week can sit through a weekend.
We work the same way. Our orders ship sometime between Sunday and Wednesday, so live bugs do not sit in a carrier facility over the weekend, and we do not promise a ship date or a delivery date. If heat, cold or a storm on the route puts live bugs at risk, we may hold an order until it is safe to ship, and we tell you by email or text when we do.
Some deliveries go to a carrier hold-for-pickup location instead of a doorstep, which removes the unattended portion of the journey. If yours does, collect it the same day: our live arrival guarantee does not cover a late pickup. Our shipping page sets out these terms and where we ship: the 48 contiguous states and Washington, DC, with no dubia roaches to Florida.
The part you control
A meaningful share of seasonal loss happens after the parcel reaches your address. That part is yours.
- Know when it is coming. We send tracking by email or text when the carrier scans your box, so the box does not have to sit unattended. In summer that is the single highest-value thing you can do.
- Do not let it sit. Bring it in on arrival, not at the end of the day. A box in the shade on a porch is still in outdoor air.
- Watch the mailbox. A closed metal box in the sun is the worst location on the property, and in winter it is close to the coldest.
- Order around the weather, not into it. Ordering ahead of a forecast cold snap or heat wave is easier than managing a delivery during one.
- Keep a buffer. Running your feeder stock down to zero in the middle of February means the next order has to arrive on schedule. Keeping a week in hand takes the pressure off.
Some feeders make better winter and summer stock than others
If you are trying to reduce your exposure to seasonal risk, the choice of feeder is part of it. Dubia roaches tolerate a wider band of conditions than crickets and are generally the more robust option through a hard season. Mealworms and superworms travel in bedding, which buffers them, and mealworms in particular hold well in cool storage once they arrive, so a larger order lasts longer. Crickets, which we do not sell, are the least forgiving common feeder at both ends of the thermometer, which is worth knowing before you build a winter feeding plan around them.
None of this means crickets should be avoided. It means that if your animal eats them exclusively, the seasonal margin for error is smaller, and it may be worth introducing a second feeder your animal accepts. Keepers of bearded dragons and leopard geckos usually have that option; some amphibian keepers have less flexibility.
When a seasonal box arrives
Unpacking in extreme weather has one rule that overrides the rest: change the temperature gradually. A box that has been cold for two days should not go onto a heat mat or in front of a heater. Let it come up in an ordinary room. The same applies in reverse to an overheated box, which should not go in a refrigerator.
Beyond that, the sequence is the same in every season, and it is covered in what to do when your feeders arrive. If the contents look poor, dead on arrival covers what to record before you start moving things around, and the live arrival guarantee on our shipping page sets out the terms that apply, including the 1 hour window for photos or video.