James came in last week, to hammer, stretch and stick together a flying net for ‘fly world’ –  a cosy home for our resident black soldier fly larvae. Black soldier flies mate in flight – the net cage you can see in the picture that James is so proudly showing us is in effect the ‘mile high’ club for our flies.

We’re setting the system up so that the larvae self-harvest when they are ready to turn into flies. They crawl out of the biodigestion unit where we put the waste food, and drop into another unit – there we will be deciding which ones to let develop into flies, and which to use in the fish feed.

At home the larvae are eating their way through spent grain from a local Brewery, and other food waste that we can chuck in. No sign of any flies yet – though we’ve only just started incubating the mix to a balmy 30 degrees. Hopefully the return to the polytunnel which in this shabby weather is rather less cosy won’t slow them down too much!