Just thought I'd mention that black soldier flies don't transmit disease. Handling them is probably safer than touching the door handle at your favorite restaurant. Or eating the food.
MAGGOTS !!!
- Thread starter suburban farm girl
- Start date
OK I have to admit that the artwork did look kinda cool.
Though some of it looked like... er... ummm... (I'll be clean)... "tadpoles".
Though some of it looked like... er... ummm... (I'll be clean)... "tadpoles".
- Thread starter
- #13
Quote:
In reading up on maggots I learned there are quiet a few types of flies. I am assuming my maggots are house flies. Are house flies another name for black soldier flies? I always thought house flies DO transmit disease.
In reading up on maggots I learned there are quiet a few types of flies. I am assuming my maggots are house flies. Are house flies another name for black soldier flies? I always thought house flies DO transmit disease.
Quote:
In reading up on maggots I learned there are quiet a few types of flies. I am assuming my maggots are house flies. Are house flies another name for black soldier flies? I always thought house flies DO transmit disease.
There are over 100,000 species of flies. The house fly (Musca domestica) is one specific species and is closely tied to humans. House flies are associated with 277 disease causing organisms according to one study.
Black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) have very different life cycles and habits than house flies and other pest flies and the result is that BSF are not associated with disease transmission. No animal on the planet can claim to be sterile including you and I, but in all of the research articles I've read there hasn't been one that gave a warning about handling BSF. I wash my hands after touching the larvae the same way I would if I touched a dog or a shopping cart handle. The shopping cart probably has more bacteria than the average black soldier fly.
I go into more detail about this subject on my blog.
I don't think it's practical to assume your maggots are house fly maggots. It's true that they're a very common fly, but it's also very common to find BSF larvae in compost bins. We know BSF are in your part of the country so it could easily be them. A quick way to distinguish between the two maggots is size. A house fly maggot won't get much bigger than a large grain of rice, but a BSF maggot can be 3/4" or sometimes longer.
How big are the larvae in your compost?
In reading up on maggots I learned there are quiet a few types of flies. I am assuming my maggots are house flies. Are house flies another name for black soldier flies? I always thought house flies DO transmit disease.
There are over 100,000 species of flies. The house fly (Musca domestica) is one specific species and is closely tied to humans. House flies are associated with 277 disease causing organisms according to one study.
Black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) have very different life cycles and habits than house flies and other pest flies and the result is that BSF are not associated with disease transmission. No animal on the planet can claim to be sterile including you and I, but in all of the research articles I've read there hasn't been one that gave a warning about handling BSF. I wash my hands after touching the larvae the same way I would if I touched a dog or a shopping cart handle. The shopping cart probably has more bacteria than the average black soldier fly.
I go into more detail about this subject on my blog.
I don't think it's practical to assume your maggots are house fly maggots. It's true that they're a very common fly, but it's also very common to find BSF larvae in compost bins. We know BSF are in your part of the country so it could easily be them. A quick way to distinguish between the two maggots is size. A house fly maggot won't get much bigger than a large grain of rice, but a BSF maggot can be 3/4" or sometimes longer.
How big are the larvae in your compost?
crtrlovr
Still chillin' with my peeps
I think I can sum up this thread in one word...
eeewwwwwwwww.....
no offense to you maggot afficionados...
eeewwwwwwwww.....
no offense to you maggot afficionados...
- Thread starter
- #16
Quote:
In reading up on maggots I learned there are quiet a few types of flies. I am assuming my maggots are house flies. Are house flies another name for black soldier flies? I always thought house flies DO transmit disease.
There are over 100,000 species of flies. The house fly (Musca domestica) is one specific species and is closely tied to humans. House flies are associated with 277 disease causing organisms according to one study.
Black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) have very different life cycles and habits than house flies and other pest flies and the result is that BSF are not associated with disease transmission. No animal on the planet can claim to be sterile including you and I, but in all of the research articles I've read there hasn't been one that gave a warning about handling BSF. I wash my hands after touching the larvae the same way I would if I touched a dog or a shopping cart handle. The shopping cart probably has more bacteria than the average black soldier fly.
I go into more detail about this subject on my blog.
I don't think it's practical to assume your maggots are house fly maggots. It's true that they're a very common fly, but it's also very common to find BSF larvae in compost bins. We know BSF are in your part of the country so it could easily be them. A quick way to distinguish between the two maggots is size. A house fly maggot won't get much bigger than a large grain of rice, but a BSF maggot can be 3/4" or sometimes longer.
How big are the larvae in your compost?
I posted a response a while ago, and it didn't show up - hmmmm.... I did some serious editing of quotes with the one that didn't show, so I'll leave this one as is.
The small ones - which I'm assuming are newly hatched- are a beige color. The ones I'm calling mature are a very dark. I haven't taken a ruler to them
, but if we're using food as a size comparison, the dark ones are about the size of an uncooked kidney bean, both in length and width...
Regardless of what type of fly they are from, my chickens LOOOOVE them !!!
In reading up on maggots I learned there are quiet a few types of flies. I am assuming my maggots are house flies. Are house flies another name for black soldier flies? I always thought house flies DO transmit disease.
There are over 100,000 species of flies. The house fly (Musca domestica) is one specific species and is closely tied to humans. House flies are associated with 277 disease causing organisms according to one study.
Black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) have very different life cycles and habits than house flies and other pest flies and the result is that BSF are not associated with disease transmission. No animal on the planet can claim to be sterile including you and I, but in all of the research articles I've read there hasn't been one that gave a warning about handling BSF. I wash my hands after touching the larvae the same way I would if I touched a dog or a shopping cart handle. The shopping cart probably has more bacteria than the average black soldier fly.
I go into more detail about this subject on my blog.
I don't think it's practical to assume your maggots are house fly maggots. It's true that they're a very common fly, but it's also very common to find BSF larvae in compost bins. We know BSF are in your part of the country so it could easily be them. A quick way to distinguish between the two maggots is size. A house fly maggot won't get much bigger than a large grain of rice, but a BSF maggot can be 3/4" or sometimes longer.
How big are the larvae in your compost?
I posted a response a while ago, and it didn't show up - hmmmm.... I did some serious editing of quotes with the one that didn't show, so I'll leave this one as is.
The small ones - which I'm assuming are newly hatched- are a beige color. The ones I'm calling mature are a very dark. I haven't taken a ruler to them
Regardless of what type of fly they are from, my chickens LOOOOVE them !!!
From your description I don't think those are house fly larvae, and they're probably BSF.
These are all black soldier fly larvae:
(click to enlarge)
The dark stage is the last stage before they pupate. The transformation to this stage includes the darker color, they don't eat, they empty their gut and excrete an antibiotic. At this stage they migrate away from the food source to find a good pupation site.
These are all black soldier fly larvae:
(click to enlarge)
The dark stage is the last stage before they pupate. The transformation to this stage includes the darker color, they don't eat, they empty their gut and excrete an antibiotic. At this stage they migrate away from the food source to find a good pupation site.
- Thread starter
- #18
Your website is cool, bsflarva.
The pix on the front page of your site show a container on a compost pile - is this for harvesting the larva? So you put something yummy in a container with holes, and within a few minutes the hungry larva are all over it? I love that. It allows me to keep my compost pile intact. (I've been scooping the maggots into a container and bringing them into the coop. A lot of my compost goes with it, and I'd prefer it to go in the garden
)
The pix on the front page of your site show a container on a compost pile - is this for harvesting the larva? So you put something yummy in a container with holes, and within a few minutes the hungry larva are all over it? I love that. It allows me to keep my compost pile intact. (I've been scooping the maggots into a container and bringing them into the coop. A lot of my compost goes with it, and I'd prefer it to go in the garden
Thanks sfg!
The Immature Larval Collection Device, or ILCD (old butter tub
), is for collecting the actively feeding, light colored larvae stages. The ramps in my unit automatically collect the dark colored prepupal larvae. When I want to harvest those (prepupae) I just open the collection bucket and scoop them out. Often I won't even look in the bucket for several days which is fine because the prepupae don't eat and will live for several weeks like that.
You may not get such rapid results using this method on a traditional compost pile because the larvae may be distributed throughout the bin. In a dedicated BSFL unit all of the larvae are in a mass just under the surface so they don't have to travel far. I would think the ILCD would still work, just more slowly.
Quote:
Maggots can drown, it just takes a very long time.
That's one of the reasons BSFL are a popular fishing bait, at least in the southeast where they're most common. If hooked properly a BSFL will keep wiggling for a very long time, but if there are any fish near them they don't last long anyway.
Here's a video of my fish enjoying some BSFL:
The Immature Larval Collection Device, or ILCD (old butter tub
You may not get such rapid results using this method on a traditional compost pile because the larvae may be distributed throughout the bin. In a dedicated BSFL unit all of the larvae are in a mass just under the surface so they don't have to travel far. I would think the ILCD would still work, just more slowly.
Quote:
Maggots can drown, it just takes a very long time.
Here's a video of my fish enjoying some BSFL:
- Thread starter
- #20
bsflarva - What do you DO with all that larva? You feed your fish, chickens get some .... It sounds like you have quite a system going though. Is there more you use them for?
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