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!
Bristol Fish Project 
Took a trip up to the polytunnel yesterday to see how you’re getting on, looking good. When do the fish go in? Here’s the place I visted in Germany last month – http://youtu.be/o7a38BVO0g8
Nearly there! Waiting for a lower wattage pump – got this one – Bermuda FilterForce 6500 – only 65 Watts – much better than the 400 watt pump I got – DOH – energy consumption of the unit is so important!!! Should have a little launch party next week – I’m thinking next week Friday evening having a get together to press the ‘on’ switch hehe 🙂 Great link! The fish looks really tasty!!!
Any updates on how your “mile-high club” for Black Soldier Flies is working?
Any update on how your “mile-high club” for Black Soldier Flies is working?
We are going to get a new stock in as this last lot was contaminated with another type of larvae – we found this lead to reduced growth of larvae and very few worms pupating to the fly form; as compared to the batch we brought through at home. More updates soon!
To give you some perspective on how small a setup can be for raising BSF: (The captions are in German but it still gives a good illustration of how small the set up can be.)
Reptile owners breed them as feeders for their pets.