The beginings of my collection

I have my females in one of those really over-sized rubbermaid bins, probably 1.5' by 3' or so and it is fairly full of rotten, ground oak stump. I saw the thread about rearing them and sort of emulated that set up so I think it should be sufficient. I've investigated once for ova and/or grubs but saw nothing. I do think I might not recognize the ova though, I couldn't find a good photo or anything that suggests scale so it's sort of an ova in the mulch pile type of thing at this point. I hope I get some grubs though, I really would love to raise them. They are beautiful beetles.

Rev., we get A. occulatus and A. myops very commonly where I am, not far from you no matter where in Georgia you are. I don't even look for them, they are just conspicuously flying around during the hottest parts of the year. I have occasionally run into them crumbling apart old wood debris too (in search of other things of course . In fact, just yesterday I found a large dead female (A. occulatus) in a parking lot. She's already dry of course, no idea how long she was dead, but I think she is really good condition if not perfect. If you want her, you are welcomed to her. I'm sure it is perfectly legal to mail a single dry, dead A. occulatus to Georgia from Florida, I wouldn't be nervous about that. Just pm me, you can have her. I've got a handful myself but I couldn't resist an already dead, perfect beetle so naturally I collected her thinking someone would surely be able to make use of her.

A good collecting tip that I have learned through experience is to be able to recognize a beetle in flight. It seems tricky at first but if you just watch some of them fly around a bit they are actually quite identifiable in a general sense, for the medium to large ones anyway. Frequently the things in flight that I used to simply over look thinking they were wasps or bees are actually beetles, which makes sense since beetles vastly outnumber everything else.

Thanks for sharing your collection, it's fun to see someone else with nice local insects. I am so lost as far as all the exotics go that none of them really impress me because they are a blur of unknowns at this point. Good to see something that isn't a rare Papilio or something like that for once.

UPDATE: I checked her, she is missing one tarsi on the right but is otherwise ok. If you would like her let me know.