Thousands of Grubs in Compost ( picture and video )

[Selena]

Quote:
Amen! People sure do look at you strange when you tell them you had to clean out the roach tank. LOL. Before Jak (my older lizard), I would have never thought I'd own one, let alone raise roaches for him! Though I've had the roaches for 18 months now, and still hate touching them. Speaking of, I gotta clean out the tank...

Thank you for the info and such. I'll have to see about it. Oy, I wonder what DH would say. "Honey, since the roaches are doing so well, can I raise flies now?"

Hey, he's the one that wanted a nasty, gross, scaly reptile in the first place! (but boy do I love those lizards now!) My only problems are that it gets pretty cold in the winter, and I have to worry about parasite concerns. Cold-blooded creatures with low-metabolism are hard to clean out, and because I adopted both my boys with special needs, I know how fun it is to give them oral meds.

 

[geedub]

Quote:
Nifty, how is you maggot ranch doing now?

Why the heck don't you throw something together specifically for raising BSF larvae? The hardest part (for many people is attracting the BSF in the first place, and you don't have that problem...

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

As of today, my bin where we dumped a ton of rotting fruit and veggies is crawling like mad. I don't know what I did to get so lucky to have a huge population of these critters but now I'm wondering what in the world I'll do once Fall / Winter come along. I'll miss them so very much!

So Jerry, when you say "throw something together" what do you have in mind?

 

[geedub]

Nifty, once a person establishes a BSF presence it usually follows that you will get bunches of them. I started with a few a little over a year ago and easily released 100K prepupal larvae around my house. Even with that many released they aren't usually even noticeable unless you're right at the unit, and even then there's just a few girls laying.

There's no reason you have to be without actively feeding BSF this winter. You won't get more females laying eggs at some point, but if you keep the larvae insulated they will remain in that stage for months before maturing. They generate their own heat so you only need a system that will capture most of it. It's reported that you can actually process more waste when it's cold because the larvae don't overheat. An active colony has been tested through a colder winter than you'll probably experience. All that was done to maintain the heat in that colony was that a slab of Styrofoam was placed on top of the compost.

Just take some tub with a lid and fix ramps to the sides that exit into a bucket with a top. Make some holes that won't let rain in but are about .5" wide to give the females access. Even if I wasn't selling BioPods I wouldn't go into great detail because I wouldn't want to undermine Dr. Olivier's success since he has been so generous with information already. But anyway, what do you have to lose by tinkering at this point?

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

I hope you don't mind continuing the discussion and learning here Jerry... hopefully it will convert others to the hobby.

I debate between letting these guys self harvest or let my chickens just do their thing and go after them in the bin. It is fun to watch them and they do a great job mixing the top of the compost. That said, it sure is cool to come out to a bucket full of grubs waiting to be fed to the chickens.

As I mentioned before, the bin that at one time was hopping busy is now pretty void of activity (had 3/4 mix of . Do you think this is because they have eaten up all the good stuff and/or because there is a bin right next door with better vittles? The temp isn't high and the medium is still moist. I believe I can still see good amounts of manure... but what do I know, I'm not a connoisseur.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Funny: I just went outside with Alana to check out the progress of our grub farm. When I opened the compost lid I saw a black wasp like bug... a Black Soldier Fly. I always see the grubs, but never the adults.

Alana who is fearless with the larvae was scared by what she thought was a wasp. I explained what they were and that they don't bite or sting and she said, "cool".

We watched as she went around and I think I even saw her laying eggs. I had Alana go get the camera but just when she left a hen jumped up on the compost and scared the fly away.

 

[geedub]

Ok, don't take this the wrong way...

Why worry about why you can't maintain larvae in a container full of exits?! There are probably many reasons that would motivate larvae to leave your compost bin and anytime one of those factors comes into play you'll lose larvae.

I think it's part of nature's design that creatures tend to spread out when they can, even if conditions aren't bad where they are. I manage a few small ponds and I've learned that uninvited fish usually migrate into ponds when water is overflowing from the pond into nearby creeks during heavy rains. The fish in the creeks make a mad dash upstream when this happens and end up in the ponds. I'm assuming they weren't suffering in the creeks and that this is just the instinctive way species widen their range. I don't know if the same type of programming drives BSFL to leave your compost bin, but it sure sounded good didn't it?

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Like making perfect compost, a lot of this feels like art over science.

My main "concern" is that I'd really like them to work on eating up the horse manure. I've got WAY more of that than I've got extra kitchen scraps. I'm also curious because I'm trying to do a miniature version of those manure reduction projects for which BSF's have been getting a good name.

I'll keep experimenting!

 

[geedub]

I understand why it might look like art, but I see it as pure science. Once you have a properly designed unit and some BSF there is almost no thought involved in maintaining it.

I just got an email today from someone asking about processing manure from two horses in a BSF composting unit. I told him I didn't think it was practical. I could certainly be wrong about that, but that's my opinion at the moment.

I believe BSF larvae only reduce swine manure by 50% and if the horses in question are eating a larger % of grasses then the reduction may even be less. I think BSF can eventually eat grasses after it's gone through bacterial breakdown, but I doubt they would choose to wait if there's a way to migrate out of the pile. Even after passing through a horse I think most of the nutrients would be unavailable to the larvae without further composting.

Using a closed unit would keep the larvae in place, but still be problematic because you would have to load the pucky into the unit continuously and then remove it after the larvae had processed it. That's moving a lot of material around and unless you're a politician it would get tiring. :|

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

How ironic! On a normal Craigslist visit I saw this post:

Maggots needed

Waneted, Black Soldier Fly maggots for my compost bin. I did buy some from a pet food company, but there are not enough to make the pheromone that is supposed to attract the adult flies to lay eggs. Thanks!

I emailed them the following:

Hi,

I’m the owner of www.backyardchickens.com and am surprised I found your post on CL. I usually have a ton of BSFL, but right now I don’t see any. Just 2 weeks ago I saw thousands in the compost bin, but now I don’t see any. Where are you located? Next time I find some I’ll let you know.​