Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Black Soldier Fly project

Jeez, how is MJ? We hear so little of him lately. I thought he was vacationing on the French Rivera or something.

He told me he just wanted to "kick back" and enjoy the summer. Maybe spend a little time attracting black soldier flies.

I've thought about hanging some banana peels on his arms. I'm sure that would provide some good food nutrition for my Dad's fish. Sure beats the heck out of the roadkill he had to hold last year.

BTW, I am serious that if I knew for a fact that BSF were present at my farm I'd try to find a way to utilize them for natural food for the fish.

The main way I get reports of BSF is from people with traditional compost bins. BSF frequently show up in them and it usually makes a big impression on the unsuspecting gardener. Most of them do a little research and then embrace the BSF larvae.

You can ask people who compost in your area and also feed stores. Where I live people call BSFL "meal maggots" because they're often found in open or wet feed. If you don't know the feed store employees they may not be inclined to admit the occasional presence of fly larvae, even wonderful flies like BSF.

Are these the ones I'm looking for? I havent seen any adults with the white legs, just alot of these growing in some wet feed at the farm. Hope my photo posts. thanks

I can't be certain, but those sure look like BSF larvae. You could be sure by observing an adult and that should be fairly easy to do. On a hot sunny afternoon you can expect to see the adult coming to the same spot as the larvae to lay more eggs. The adults are easy to get close to which makes identifying them simple.

Well it was a hot sunny afternoon today and sure enough several BSF came to the wet sack of pig feed. You were correct in saying they are easy to identify those white striped legs are very easy to see. I fed a handful of larvae to the fish in our small pond which I thought were tilapia but now I'm thinking there piranha. The water bubbled like something out of a Tarzan movie. The fish rely do like those things. Next I'll try it on the chickens and the pigs to see if they have a taste for them. If the pigs like them and I'm able to find an efficient way to dry them this could save me a good deal of money on fish meal and help dispose of allot of pig waste. Do you have any info or links pertaining to the processing of BSFL? I can't seem to find any. Thanks

Hi Santarosa, I'll jump in here before GW answers. My BioPod unit is "self harvesting" - they crawl up inside ramps and drop in a bucket when they turn black. They are clean and dry and no problem to handle. Quite a few of mine are self-harvesting early, and they are still wet. Don't know why they do this, but the fish seem to like them more than the black ones.

Reminded me of a guy that works for a local hospital. He has several female mannequins. Has a closet full of hand made clothes for them. Dresses them up & has dinner with them. Calls them his "girls".
Let's don't encourage Bruce.

Randy, it sounds like all is well with your unit. Please let me know if you run into any problems.

Santarosa, I'm not aware of any info about drying the larvae, but I imagine it would be fairly simple. Please let me know if you try it.

I have no doubt that your chickens and pigs will go for the BSFL. You may enjoy this BSF thread from a neat chicken forum: BackYardChickens

Ric, I'm not goin' there.

GW, I'm a new subscriber but I've been following your really great observations and comments for several weeks. I've had a Biopod for about three weeks. I can't seem to find any native BSF so I ordered a start-up colony plus about 400 maggots from Wormman. My question concerns moisture in the Biopod. I've been feeding saturated dry dog food, as much as they will eat, but I've collected no liquid drainage. Is it necessary to have drainage? Should I add more water? For the first two weeks the larval activity kept the bed at close to 100F, but in the last week at least half the larvae have gone to black prepupal or pupal stage and the bed temp has reduced to near ambient level. Is this sudden maturation to be expected, or did I force it with too much dry food? I had planned to corral the adults to breed, but after reading the reprint on lekking behavior I doubt if it will happen. In Montana summers, the days are warm, 80s and 90s, but the nights are cool 50s, and I don't know how that will affect the lekking.

Hi geordie41, welcome to Pond Boss and congratulations on getting a BioPod.

First, I'm not sure what you started with. Did the start up kit include either eggs or pupae in addition to the larvae. There may some confusion about terminology. I don't usually refer to BSF larvae as maggots simply because most people have developed an aversion to the term because of housefly and blowfly maggots (larvae).

The seeding kits that I send out with my BioPod orders contain both eggs, the dark prepupal larvae, and/or pupae. If you seeded your BioPod with only immature larvae then it would make sense that the activity is slowing down as they mature. Keep in mind that you very well may have wild BSF visiting your BioPod and laying eggs. Have you checked the egg disc? The eggs look like this: BSF eggs in a BioPod egg disc

It will be easier for me to help you if you'll read my blog page that describes my seeding kit. You can find it here.

It's not necessary to have the excess liquid that most people get. The "tea" is a byproduct of the larvae processing high moisture foods like fruits and vegetables. BSF do best in humid environments and if it seems too dry just add a little more water. I think it would be better to add too much water than not enough. I would try gradually adding more water until you see some tea being produced and then you can always reduce the amount a little. Also it would be a good idea to produce some tea because the scent of it is a strong attractant to BSF females. I would paint some of it on the underside of the lid or on the egg disc. (It's always a good idea to wash your hands after handling the tea.) Of course once the colony is established you won't need to worry about attracting adults, it will happen naturally.

I think your summertime weather would be fine for the entire BSF cycle. I think you could corral them in a large greenhouse of screen enclosure, but it's certainly not necessary. BSF aren't the best fliers and they only have a few days to mate and lay eggs so I don't think they'll tend to wander too far off.

Let me know what you think after reading about my seeding kit instructions.

i f i set up a biopod will the bsf stay around or fly away somewhere? do they keep coming back to the bio pod? thank you

BSF don't seem to be designed for long or sustained flight. Most of the research I've read refers to them as poor fliers so I think they would tend to stay close by.

The first female BSF to lay eggs in your BioPod will deposit several hundred eggs. Depending on which source you use, one BSF will lay from 500 - 900 eggs. For every 10 females attracted to your BioPod you may have as many as 9000 larvae and moralities are rare. If you allow even a modest percentage of those larvae to pupate near your unit it's a pretty safe bet that you'll have plenty of new adults to replenish the population.

For the record, I've released 10's of thousands of BSF on my property over the last 1.5 years and still they are not very noticeable, but they are here. I see a few by the garbage cans if I'm behind in taking them to the dumpster, and I see them occasionally in and around my BSF units. They emerge, they mate, the females lay their eggs, and then they die. During the adult phase of their life cycle the BSF are like the perfect guests on your property, quietly minding their own business and then disappearing. I wrote this because I believe people imagine swarms of flies buzzing around their house and disrupting their lives. Not even close.

I've been managing the construction of a garage for my girlfriend and there have been several subcontractors on the project. My main BSF unit is 30 feet from the site and no one has been pestered by a fly. The BSF don't benefit from direct contact with humans so it's rare to even see one.

i dont have bushes or plant life around my yard would this be a problem you think ?

I don't think so. I've only seen one pair of BSF mating and that was above the large concrete apron of the garage I mentioned. I managed to record a few wobbly seconds of it and I'll post the video later. (Now I have to go and test some BSF larvae as bait at my neighbor's pond. )

I think a lawn would be good at least, but even in the absence of a lawn I think some BSF would survive, but maybe not at optimal levels. You have numbers in your favor because the BioPod increases the survival of the larvae to a dramatic degree compared to the loses they would experience in the open. In nature I expect that only a very small percentage of larvae live to transform into adults whereas nearly all survive in a BioPod or similar device.

In a seeding kit it's not unusual for me to include over 1000 prepupal larvae. If 500 of them are females, that represents the potential for as many as 450,000 individuals (500 females X 900 eggs each) in the next generation. If you use the more conservative estimate of egg laying capacity it still equals a lot of larvae.

thank you

Here's the video I took of the BSF mating. It's ridiculously bad but someday I'll get a better shot. They eventually landed on the slab and then separated after a short period of cuddling.

While looking up phoenix worms a while back I stumbled upon this thread. I was inspired to start my own black soldier fly project. Unfortunately my first attempt in early spring failed. I put out too little food and let it get dried out. I found about three black larvae in my collection cup, but those were probably ones I had seeded. As of about a week ago I have started a new attempt. This time I am paying more attention to the conditions of my colony. So far I've only got fruit flies and house flies. I saw a bsf in my yard last summer so I know they live around here. I just ordered some larvae to seed it because I'm impatient. Hopefully it works out this time. It's strange to be so excited about maggots. Anyway thanks for the inspiration GW.

Oh and by the way I'm amazed you were actually able to get BSF mating on video.

Thanks Torin.

I recommend multiple orders of larvae in small quantities and staggering the deliveries every 1 - 3 weeks depending on your budget. The goal is to have actively feeding larvae at the same time your earlier generations are emerging. The combination of food scraps and actively feeding larvae should be very attractive to female BSF.

GW, almost overnight most of my Biopod colony turned black and migrated to the collection bucket where they remain very active. I can actually hear them moving around. Since they migrated out of the food area, I assume this prepupal stage no longer eats, but what about moisture. Our relative humidity is about 35%; should I spritz them occasionally or just let them be? I'd like to expose them to hatch; should they be protected from direct sun, etc.

geordie, you're right about these prepupal larvae not eating. They're moving around trying to find a good place to pupate. I would move them to a closed container like a 5 gallon bucket and lid with a few .5 - .75 inch holes high up on the side. The lid will keep predators from enjoying tasty snacks and the holes are to let the adults out after they emerge.

Your humidity might be acceptable, but you could keep a bowl of water in the bucket as insurance. Misting would work but don't go too heavy. I would set it up so the larvae have a few inches of bedding such as sawdust to induce them to settle down and pupate. Keep the pupae near the BioPod and yes you should avoid direct sunlight. After a few weeks you can start checking for emergent adults. To see if they're emerging you can sift through the pupae and look for empty skins. Here's a video of an adult emerging: VIDEO

Since your starter kit contained similar ages of larvae I recommend ordering more immature larvae to help attract the new adults after they mate. Actively feeding larvae are the best attractant for female BSF. The "tea" is also excellent for this so if you don't want to order more larvae you might try to preserve any if you have it. Freezing it might work, but you would probably want to check with any roommates, spouses, etc. If you don't have tea at least keep whatever BSF residue you have in the BioPod.

If I were you I'd place an order for 100 of the smallest "Phoenix worms" every week beginning two weeks after your first generation larvae pupate. (When they pupate they look the same, just stiff and usually straight.) 100 larvae isn't much but it should help. I think you can have them delivered for $6/100. That will ensure that you always have an active colony and some tea when the females are seeking a place to lay their eggs.

Let me know how it goes.

GW, thanks for the attention, I have a bunch of 5 qt plastic buckets and lots of sphagnum peat, so I'll set up a puparium. So that you'll know where I'm coming from, I'm on the east slope of the Rockies at 5000 ft, a "semi-arid" climate, with warm days, cool nights, and low humidity. I've never seen a native BSF, but then I wasn't looking. August is sort of unstable, with days of 80s-90s and nights of 40s-50s. When the Biopod was active, it maintained a temp of about 100F, but with the mass pupation the pod temp dropped to ambient temps; for this reason I brought the pod indoors to keep it about 75F. According to the literature, the grubs will continue to eat at low temps but won't metamorphose. But, mine did, en masse. And the tan grubs that remained were fat and torpid, barely moving. I like your suggestion of weekly ordering to keep the pod active, but I'd really like to establish a self-propagating population, but I'm realizing that may not be an eventuality in this geographical area. It is one thing to insulate an active pod and keep it working over a cold winter, but it is something else to make it self-propagating. It will be an interesting winter.

geordie, winter will be challenging but summer shouldn't be too bad. I think the worst case scenario is that you will have to nurse the pupae a little, but otherwise summer should be easy.

I would keep returning any light colored grubs from the collection bucket back into the BioPod. They may be inactive because they're getting ready to shed their skin and maybe they have another stage of active feeding to go. It's not unusual for immature larvae to migrate out of the unit, especially if it gets a little warm.

With your climate you probably don't have a local BSF population. For the record I've shown many native Georgians their first BSF, this is BSF country. The reason for that is the life cycle and habits of these critters. They just don't go around people normally and the adults live such a short time. I'm sure many people picture swarms of BSF around a BioPod but it just isn't true.

I just finished a blog post about Wikipedia's misleading entry for black soldier flies. Normally I would just post my opinion here also but the post got to be too long. Here's the link:

"Wikipedia misrepresents black soldier flies"

Edit: I am completely amazed at how easy it is for absolutely anyone to change a Wikipedia entry. If you have a computer and a 3rd grade education you can modify any entry in about 3 minutes. Of course anyone else can come behind you and undo your changes and that's the way it works. Wikipedia can be a handy and valuable source of information, but take it with a block of salt.

Pasture fresh meadow muffin served with a wedge of melon and garnished with tomato leaves. These BSF larve are lovin' life!