Barbara, given your climate I think it should be fairly easy to maintain a colony all year. I found this at the BioPod website:
Quote:
Larvae over winter in a sheltered dry location, with pupae development slowing considerably during the coldest months. Depending on a multitude of environmental triggers, pupation occurs irregularly throughout spring and summer, so that the emergence of adults is spread out over an extended time period.
During summer, the conversion rate of fresh food waste into fresh larvae runs as high as 20%, but during winter, this conversion drops to less than 5%, in spite of the fact that the larvae digest roughly the same daily quantity of food waste per unit surface area. Under ideal summer conditions, it takes about two weeks for newly hatched larvae to reach their mature prepupal form, but during the cold of fall and winter, this two-week period may extend to six months. If SF larvae are able to generate their own heat throughout winter and if they are able to extend their life cycle until more favorable conditions return in spring, then the management of SF larvae becomes far easier than anyone had previously imagined.
If disposal units are well insulated, then SF technology could be introduced to some of the coldest regions of our planet. If so, the supply of eggs to such extreme areas will become an important technical issue, and all aspects of larval maturation must be researched in a definitive and conclusive manner.
During the hot summer months, overcrowding can easily occur, and this overcrowding gives rise to relatively high temperatures within the unit. In order to cool down, some actively feeding larvae are forced to exit the unit. This migration continues until the density of larvae and temperature within the unit drop to an acceptable level. But during the winter months, larvae can thrive in very large numbers without overheating, and as the mass of larvae increases in winter, so too, the amount of waste consumed within a given unit. Paradoxically it would appear that this bioconversion unit functions far better in winter than in summer.
Since I discovered how well dry dog food works to attract BSF I personally wouldn't use anything as volatile as meat or fish. Anyway the worse case scenario is that you'll have to dump some nasty garbage out in a few days.
If you have some time on a hot sunny afternoon, see if you can identify any BSF that might be visiting your scraps. They're easy to recognize and they aren't afraid of humans observing them.
You might need larger holes in your bucket. Maybe not, but they're pretty big and I've never tried limiting them to 1/4 inch holes before. If they can't enter easily they will probably lay on the outside of the bucket.
