Dale McZilkey commands a workforce of more than 24,000 and rarely has to handle any complaints.

"You just have to feed them," he said. "You have to feed them a lot."

McZilkey's company, Southern Skull Cleaning, does exactly what its name implies -- and he uses flesh-eating dermestid beetles to get the job done.

"It's not so bad, once you get used to the smell," he said, showing off a series of vats filled with beetle colonies in varying stages of development.

The tiny insects have been used for more than a century to clean skeletons and bones for natural history museums -- and more recently in taxidermy work.

"There are lots of hunters out there who like what they call the 'European mounts' that have the skull and antlers," McZilkey said. "That's the kind of stuff we do."

McZilkey, who operates the business with his wife, Ellen, doesn't see himself as a competitor with taxidermists.

"The taxidermy trade is an art form -- they bring things back to life," he said. "What we do is completely different."

Transforming a fresh deer head into a polished, preserved keepsake doesn't happen overnight, even with thousands of beetles that can remove every shred of flesh in a matter of days.

"From start to finish you're looking at two to three weeks," he said. "A lot of work goes into preparing the head. You have to get it skinned, and get the eyes and tongue removed."

The beetles do their work rapidly, but the final touches are still very important.

"Once the bugs are finished, the bone is kind of reddish looking," he said. "We apply a degreaser, then a whitener and then a sealant spray."

Most business involves deer skulls, but hunters lucky enough to get an alligator permit often bring their gator skulls for cleaning and preserving. "We can also do beaver, fox -- anything you want."

Some hunters prefer a different look than polished bone. "We can apply camo to the skull, or even metalized paint."

McZilkey became a beetle rancher last year, and he has spent much of this year fine-tuning his colonies, which live in three vats in an air-conditioned, ventilated shed in his backyard.

"We have, on average, about 8,000 or so per vat, and there are three vats," he said. "It's a lot of bugs."

During hunting season, there are plenty of heads to keep the hungry bugs busy. In the off-season, they still have to be fed.

"We'll give them old meat, hot dogs, whatever we can find," he said. "We also gather up doe heads at the deer processor and freeze them. So when we need to, we feed them doe heads."

Dermestid beetles typically aren't dangerous, although the concept of raising flesh-eating insects never ceases to raise eyebrows.

"They can eat their way out of just about anything -- except glass or metal," McZilkey said, noting that they won't consume living creatures, either. "They'll eat anything as long as it doesn't have a pulse."

McZilkey's Web site is southernskullcleaning.com.