Extra space on left side catches frass and molts

The original Hopper Hopper I made has worked out pretty well. It is a bin, some duct tape, and a modified 5 gallon water bottle to act as a funnel. The whole idea reminds me of that scene in Return of the Jedi, where they’re outside Jabba the Hut’s lair in the sand above that thing called a sarlacc and people are falling in it’s toothy mouth. Recently, I made one adjustment in using a larger bin and moving the funnel to one side. Having the extra space on one side of the bin now allows me to tap the egg cartons full of crickets on one side of the bin so that frass and molts can easily drop and be vacuumed up after herding the crickets toward the funnel. This change has helped with the time it takes to harvest. Before, I was taking too much time trying to keep the frass out of the funnel. Now, it’s much simpler. There are still some stragglers that I have to hand pick and that’s always fun, but this system works for small producers as far as I can tell. I should add that I’m working on another way to harvest crickets and will be posting about our trials soon so you can see how that develops from the beginning.