Rhopalurus rochai (Borelli 1910) is a very common scorpion species found in the semiarid areas of Pernambuco State, Brazil. This work describes the life history traits of 1^st instar R. rochai such as litter size, development time, dispersal, and survivorship. The development of 2^nd instar juveniles under different feeding regimens was also investigated to determine the effect of food and body mass on intermolt period and number of ecdyses. Field-collected females displaying an enlarged mesosoma were observed daily in the laboratory to obtain newborns that were used to assess events in the 1^st instar. Females gave birth on average to 35.8 young (range  =  23–55). The duration of the 1^st instar (from eclosion to ecdysis) ranged from 7 to 10 days (n  =  179). Dispersal started as early as one day following ecdysis and lasted up to 9 days post-molt. All starved juveniles died between days 11 and 30 of the 2^nd instar. Increasing food ingestion did not enhance the probability of molting, but decreased risk of mortality and increased the time to the second molt. The relationship between the weight changes during feeding experiments suggests that the threshold weight for molt is 34.3 mg. Together these results suggest that developmental periods for R. rochai are slightly greater than those recorded for other buthid genera. These results indicate that there may be inherent physiological costs associated with rapidly increasing mass that may strongly impact foraging strategy.