Comments on: Raising Black Soldier Flies in Cold Regions

By: Bentley

Bentley — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 14:34:17 +0000

Thanks, Dawn!
😎

By: Dawn Richardson

Dawn Richardson — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 18:36:03 +0000

Oops! I did! Thanks for catching that! Here it is:

https://ie.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/277/2016/03/bsfl_how-to_guide.pdf

By: Bentley

Bentley — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 12:47:03 +0000

Hi Dawn – that sounds interesting, but did you forget to provide a link for the project you were referring to? Thanks

By: Dawn Richardson

Dawn Richardson — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 10:13:20 +0000

This project by UNC students has a lot of great info about farming BSFL (though they don’t seem overly optimistic about mating them in captivity). Most notably it has an extremely detailed formula for calculating space and waste needed for chicken feed operations, and a really simple and affordable design for a DIY self-harvesting system.

By: billy bob

billy bob — Mon, 27 May 2013 03:45:50 +0000

I’m along the interstate between Boise Idaho and Oregon.
I would prefer the bsf stay out of the worms, only because they make them so hot, but it seems impossible so far to restrict them. Every time I dig in the worms I come accross larva of all sizes. They pupate quite happily in there. Currently the room is possessed by several thousand flys. Has got to be lots coming from the worm bins, as I haven’t had that many crawling off the bsf bins. The tilapia sure are eating them up, though they haven’t yet gotten to the flies.

By: BorealWormer

BorealWormer — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:03:58 +0000

billy bob where are you located?

I think the adults flies are content to use walls instead of plants given the choice.

Do you see the prepupal larvae crawling out of the worm bin to pupate? I has a few in my indoor worm bin and they seemed to pupate in the bin with no problems.

By: billy bob

billy bob — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:16:36 +0000

I got some grub in fall 2011 as feeders and put some in a worm bin in the greenhouse. It was heated for winter 11/12 and had successful regeneration until the heat of summer arrived. At that time the greenhouse would routinely reach 130+ so it was opened up and mostly unused. BSF dissappeared. No reason to heat greenhouse winter of 12/13. However, I did bring in a couple worm bins to a spare bedroom in the house, actually it’s now a fish room. Standard flourescent lighting on the tanks 16 hours a day and 80f. While digging through the worm bin I came upon some larva and now the fifth generation is just hatching out. There are a couple sweet potato vines in there too, but I see the flies kinda haning and mating and stuff pretty much everywhere they can.

By: Mike aka BW

Mike aka BW — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:02:10 +0000

The original poster of the forum thread I mentioned in comment 40 above has posted a video (link) about his system. Like the forum the captions in the video are in German but it still is a good illustration of how simple a BSF rearing system can be.

By: Mike aka BW

Mike aka BW — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:38:06 +0000

Thanks Heather. A lot of it is based on info from reptile owners in Germany (see comment #40 above) and from you of course. I can’t really expand the system due to the limited space I have available but I intend to continue the experiment to see how many successive generations I can raise indoors.

By: Bentley

Bentley — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:06:01 +0000

Sorry Heather and Mike – your comments got lost during a website/server move. I seem to have found Heather’s, but not Mike’s reply.

Bentley