Can I feed black soldier fly larvae straight from the breeding bucket?

[Pet Duck Boy]

It's surprising how fast these grubs can turn scraps into nothing! I threw in a pound of scraps last night since it's all gone now. There's a pretty strong earthy aroma to it now, not disgusting at all. Problem is, my DIY tubes had clogged full of grubs, it was too small to let so many larvae pass. So for now I'm seperating the prepupal grubs manually until I get a good system set up. I wish I had a biopod but those things are expensive.. For now, I'm going to let the grubs pupate and let the adults go. For some reason there's been a decrease in BSF adults, 3 days ago I had several MUCH smaller adults visiting the bucket. The last 2 days nothing. Plenty of larvae though!

 

[rolivier79]

Please send picture

 

[Pet Duck Boy]

Taking pics right now.

 

[Pet Duck Boy]

The bucket, the holes are where the tubes went but I took them out. Still don't know what to do for the self-harvesting system.

The grubs, just after slightly disturbing the surface. They squirm fast when exposed to light, hence the blur.

Prepupal grub, I'm taking these out whenever I see them.

More of the grubs after digging half-way down, this is only a quater of the bucket, there's lots of 'em, and they move fast!

More of them.

I'm surprised I haven't seen any adults for a while, after getting 5-10 females a day. There's currently no egg masses. Seems like those adults were coming from a certain source it's been possibly depleted?

 

[rolivier79]

Have you tried just baiting them into a perforated bucket?

What you do is lower a "jummy" last meal into a small perforated bucket (drill some holes with a drill) and wait 30 minutes for the bucket to fill. Then you remove the bucket from the bigger colony and you feed those to your chickens.

Robert

 

[elmo]

Black soldier flies found my compost bin this summer and wow! now I have a bin full of finished compost. That was definitely fast.

 

[Pet Duck Boy]

Quote:
Good idea, I haven't thought of that. Thanks!

 

[grandfatherjwv]

See my design for Black Soldier Fly Larvae automatic feeder (can be used with collection cup) at 2nd page of my BYC pages. ..... grandfatherjwv

 

[Papas Chickens]

I live in AZ and purchased 500 pheinix worms I put them into my compost bin which is a 35 gallon plastic tub with another smaller plastic tub that is angled at 30 degrees with drain holes on the bottom and a hole cut on the high side with a collection bucket under it. I put them in and when I checked them the next day they were all dead, some in the collection tray some in the bottom of the plastic tub and some still in the compost. I left the lid off of the collection bucket side but when I checked them the lid was on I think my cousin put it on not knowing it shouldnt be. When I opened it it was very humid and hot in it, could that be what killed them? Im just learning about BSFL so any help would be great. Shiuld I drill holes in the tub? Or maybe cut part of the top and replace it with window screen?