Today, there were/still are several BSF around the unit and one even got in the house. I said, "honey look, a bsf got in the house!" As I was easily trying to catch and release it, my father-in-law was looking at me kind of funny like wondering why I wasn't trying to kill it. But you understand that he doesn't really know what that contraption is that sometimes smells out there on the porch. After my wife explained to him that if there are enough larvae in the container, they keep flies away, He was fine with it!
I spread a light layer of dry coffee grounds across the top of the bin and that seems to absorb or hide the strong smell. Just today all the flies went away since the drownings and heat strokes. I assume the larvae are now dominant again.
I am keeping the top off of the unit 24/7 now since I rigged up a small overhang on the edge of the container all the way around to hopefully 100% keep premature crawloff from out over the edges.
The reason for the above change is this: After finding the larvae overheated and drowned, the consumption went down and there was very bad smell, then because of the smell, there was an influx of all kinds of flies, including the large flesh fly and dragon flies. As the Larvae population grew back over the last 4 days, (only adding dry items to bin), I was having a lot of premature crawloff out of the top and not big ones, but small ones from 1/4" to 3/8" and I thought that all the big ones had drowned. I dug down and turned over some material (with a big metal spoon because of the yuck factor) and found lots of big ones and lots of big dark ones.
So, Here is my question. Why were the small ones hauling tail while the bigger ones stay down under the surface?
