My new BIOPOD™ by ProtaCulture™

Jul 112008
 

My first BioPod

After working with and blogging about black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens) for over a year I finally have one of the first BioPods. For the past year I’ve been getting by with my homemade unit and I’m looking forward to testing this product. With that previous experience I’m pretty familiar with the shortcomings of my unit and from what I can tell by looking, the BioPod addresses those problems.

I’m starting this colony from scratch

I already have a colony of BSF larvae established, but I want to take this opportunity to start a BioPod from scratch. On one hand it seems like I’ll have an advantage starting this new colony because I have an established BSF population on my property, but that may not be an advantage. My existing colony which is 200 feet (60 meters) from my new BioPod is a powerful attraction to any female BSF looking to lay their eggs. BSF larvae do not have a strong or unpleasant odor, but their scent is easily picked up by the adult females.

The bait

The BioPod user’s guide recommends starting your colony with normal household food scraps except for meat or fish. It’s not a problem to feed meats or fish to an established colony, but before that stage those items will attract too many unwanted critters. I started my first colony using assorted scraps, but for this unit I’m using only dry dog food. I added 2 cups (.5 liters) of it, slightly moistened. The humidity where I live is usually 50% or higher so I don’t think I’ll need to wet it further. The purpose of wetting it in the first place is to enhance the smell and it may not even be necessary. The reason I’m testing with the dog food is because some types of food scraps start to look nasty after a few weeks and the dog food is fairly stable. In the end it probably doesn’t make much difference, but it’s hard for me to follow instructions sometimes. :)

JULY 10

This is the day my BioPod arrived. I set it up in about 20 minutes, added the bait, and so far that’s all I’ve done. It’s important to deter ants from entering the BioPod so I’m going to treat the legs of the stand with a small amount of Bug Stop.

JULY 15

It’s been raining a lot lately and that seems to slow down the BSF adults. I haven’t observed any BSF or seen any eggs on the new BioPod yet. This morning when I checked it there were a few house flies on the lid and I could smell the dog food from outside. Inside there were a few fruit flies and nothing else.

JULY 20

Still no sign of black soldier flies in the BioPod, even though they’re active only a few hundred feet away.  I guess this reinforces the idea that if you maintain a BSF colony that you won’t have them all over your property. I’ve seen a few house flies on the BioPod lid but none inside. This may be because they aren’t willing to enter the small opening in the BioPod. My homemade unit had a fair amount of house flies entering it at this stage.

The dog food I used as an attractant is beginning to mold and I don’t think it was necessary to moisten it. Still not bad for 10 days in the summer though. :)

It can be frustrating waiting for the BSF to show up at your BioPod. I think the key is getting that first female  to lay her eggs in your BioPod. Once that happens I think the others will quickly follow.

JULY 24

Still no luck in the new BioPod and I may have a clue why it’s taking this long, even with the healthy BSF population on my property.

frog on the BioPod lid

I’m sure this one frog isn’t the only reason it’s taking a while and it may be the other colony I have on the property is getting all of the attention. Still, that is one well fed frog. :)

JULY 27

Okay, first of all, the frog was back! The frog from the photo has some unique markings and I believe the one I saw today was the same frog. The first time I moved it about 50 feet, this time I tried 100. :)

Other than that I want to say UEREKA! I now have BSF eggs in my new BioPod. I’m surprised how long it took, but as I mentioned earlier I believe my other colony was attracting most of the females.

It won’t be long now!

Black soldier fly eggs on egg disc

(egg disc removed from BioPod for photo)

AUGUST 1

I have a few different types of larvae feeding in the BioPod now which are too large to have come from the eggs in the photo above. I think I’ve seen one of these species in the past when starting a BSF colony, and I think it may be one of the other soldier fly variaties. Here’s a photo of that fly:

possible soldier fly - not bsf

(unidentified fly – not bsf)

There are over 200 members of the soldier fly family (Stratiomyidae) in North American, but I assume the other soldier flies won’t work well for bio-composting.

I’m fairly certain some of the larger larvae feeding in the BioPod are black soldier fly larvae, so it shouldn’t be long before they become the dominant species.

Frog removal is becoming a daily chore. :/

AUGUST 2

I may have been too conservative with the food scraps added to the Pod so far. I’ve limited the food source to the original few cups of dry dog food put in at the beginning. Since there are larvae now present I decided to add more food today. When I removed the BioPod lid I was happily surprised to see 4 female BSF laying eggs. If they all survive that could be a few thousand larvae.  Two of them kept laying will I poured the sloppy scraps in.

AUGUST 10

Today there were prepupae in the collection bucket. Prepupal larvae (prepupae) are simply the mature, dark colored larvae that are in the final stage before they pupate and change into adult black soldier flies. Although the light colored immature larvae sometimes migrate out of the BioPod the majority are these prepupal larvae.

prepupal black soldier fly larvae

Above: The BioPod collection bucket

The number of larvae actively feeding in my new pod is steadily increasing as is to be expected. I’m short on food scraps so I’ve been feeding this colony a type of hog feed that is made from cornmeal. Ideally I’ll find a source of food waste to use but for now I don’t have the time to find it or fetch it. : /

bsf colony on August 10, 2008

SEPTEMBER 24

I haven’t had much to report since the past several weeks have been business (BSF composting) as usual. I add scraps every 2 or 3 days and I occasionally empty the collection bucket and liquid jar. I’m spending about 5 minutes per day with this unit on average. Most of the grubs have been fed to my pond fish, and some of them have been sent to my BioPod customers in seeding kits.

As the weather gets cooler I’ll monitor the activity of the female black soldier flies that visit the unit to lay eggs. I’ll probably start a new post to record the end of season information.

composter, compost, larvae, fly, flies, biopod

I crashed my pod

Jun 262008
 

blimp

Experiment causes black soldier fly larvae colony to crash!

Okay, maybe the blimp image is a little extreme, but it’s difficult to get attention on the internet these days. :P The good news is that bringing my BSF colony (Hermetia illucens) back into balance shouldn’t be all that difficult. In the past when I’ve run into problems I’ve corrected them by lessening the amount of food scraps that I introduced into the unit, and that is what I’m doing currently.

BSF larvae can eat almost anything

BSF grubs will consume almost anything organic except high cellulose materials like woody stems and grasses. They will quickly eat just about anything that has available calories including food waste that would probably be toxic to humans, like decomposing fish for example. The fact that they are able to efficiently digest such a wide range of material is what makes BSF larvae such a powerful tool for processing waste.

About those decomposing fish…

I help my neighbor manage the small pond behind his house. Recently several of his fish died and I did him the favor of removing them a few days after they floated to the surface. The fish weighed about 5 pounds (2.3 Kg) total and by the time I removed them they were already very stinky. Instead of disposing of them like a normal person I decided to see how quickly my BSF would process them. I’m happy to report that my small colony completely consumed the fish within about 2 days. I am unhappy to report that after I added the decomposing fish to my BSF unit it began attracting blow flies and house flies.

Black soldier fly grubs produce an info-chemical that repels pest flies, but there are limits as this test illustrates. The odor of these decaying fish was a powerful attractant to undesirable flies and it overpowered the repellent properties that are normally very effective in a BioPod.

I’m currently using a homemade BSF unit (not any more!) because BioPods are not yet available. My homemade unit is a less efficient design and I’m sure that this made my recent problem worse than it would have been. My unit doesn’t deal with liquids as well as a BioPod so the problem was less contained than it would have been with the commercial product. I will be happy when the first BioPods arrive.

And now the good news

Even the extreme imbalance created by adding these decaying fish to my colony can be corrected with a little time and care. Of course I’m more cautious about sanitation while the pest flies are present, but in reality I don’t need to do much other than stop feeding the colony and let the other flies cycle through. It’s now been about 5 days since I added the fish and my colony is almost back to a balanced state again.

You can avoid this type of problem easily

My test with the decayed fish was something that most people would not have tried, but I’m involved in testing the limits of this technology. If you use BSF larvae to process your normal household food scraps it’s very unlikely that you’ll experience anything like the crash I just created. You can even add food that is somewhat  spoiled and you shouldn’t have a problem like my recent experience.

Timing the transition-larva to adult black soldier fly

May 302008
 


MAY 30

Today I harvested the first of the prepupal black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens) from this year’s colony. At this stage their instinct is to leave the food source and find a suitable place to pupate. I don’t know much about this part of the BSF life cycle so I want to find out first hand. I put the harvested grubs (larvae) into a closed container and I’ll be observing their behavior and changes, hopefully until the point where they emerge as adults.

testing black soldier fly development

When BSF grubs enter into their final stage as larvae they undergo some interesting changes. They go from a pale “grub” color to a dark coffee brown, and their mouth is replaced by a hook-like appendage to help them crawl in search of a good pupation site. They also empty their gut and excrete an antibiotic, a behavior which I find fascinating. A veterinarian friend of mine wonders if animals that eat the final stage grubs might benefit from ingesting the antibiotic.

Update MAY 31

Yesterday I placed about 15 prepupal BSF grubs into a one gallon container with some leaves and grass. If you click the photo above to enlarge it you can see a few of them. I added a handful of sand to one corner of the container and the larvae quickly buried themselves in it. One entered the sand but came back out and settled under a leaf.

I found a great poster by the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (eawag), which outlines the BSF life cycle. BSF LIFE CYCLE

JUNE 2

They’re just laying there…

JUNE 6

*tap tap tap*

JUNE 9

I spoke with Dr. Olivier and he said that sand isn’t the best material for a pupation site. He recommended using sawdust to house pupae. He also puts some in the BioPod collection bucket to help keep it dry. He told me about a hamster bedding that works well, I think it was Aspen Bedding.

My pupae are still pupating…..

JUNE 19

Still waiting!

JUNE 26

Today I noticed adult BSF emerging from the pupae for the first time. It’s very possible that they started coming out before that but what can I say, I’ve been busy. :) I tried to photograph the process of the adults emerging but it happens very quickly. I checked on the pupae at one point and I noticed that an adult had it’s head out of the casing. I ran for my nearby camera and in the 20-30 seconds it took me to return the fly was already out and expanding it’s wings.

newly emerged black soldier fly


newly emerged black soldier fly 2

getting started – Attracting the BSF

May 282008
 

To establish black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) you first need to attract the adult (winged) females so they can lay their eggs. To do this you need to bait them with some type of food.

black soldier fly bait box

Types of food for baiting BSF

You may use almost any food scraps, but I’m experimenting with different types to see which are the best. To find the bait the flies will need to be able to follow a scent trail, so items like vegetable peels or bread might not be the best choice. You may not attract the BSF right away so choosing a type of bait that won’t spoil too quickly may be a good idea. When I started a new colony this year I put out dry dog food (slightly moistened), used tea bags, refried beans, cottage cheese and coffee grounds. The teabags helped hold in moisture and the BSF like to lay their eggs on paper. I’ve noticed that the larvae seem to like coffee grounds so I thought they might be good for attracting adults. I kept this bait outside in fairly warm weather for two weeks and it never did get too nasty and it worked pretty well also. I think it’s a good idea to keep the bait moist for two reasons; the smell will be a little stronger (better attractant) and any eggs may develop more effectively.

Bait boxes

This year instead of putting my BSF bait directly into the BioComposter I tried putting out four individual bait boxes (see photo above). I made them by cutting the ends off of 12 pack soda cartons. Since I added water to the bait everyday it would have been a good idea to reinforce the bottoms with tape, but they held up just long enough. One reason I tried these boxes was to make it easier to swap out the bait if it spoiled too much. The main reason I tried it was so that I could easily move the bait to different areas. I think one of the best places I found was near a garbage can that was a little past the point when it should have been picked up. I moved the boxes into a closed container at night because the BSF aren’t out then. In fact, I’ve rarely seen one laying eggs before noon, they seem to be active during the hottest part of the day. Maybe that will change as we move into summer.

Once you have established a balanced colony of BSF larvae the number of houseflies near your colony will be dramatically reduced. Most likely you will have to put up with them until then. Either way it’s wise to wear latex gloves when handling the boxes. With an established BSF colony I usually just wash my hands immediately after working with them. Unlike houseflies, black soldier flies aren’t associated with the transmission of disease.

bsf-bait-near-garbage-can

After about a week I was seeing a good number of BSF laying eggs in the bait boxes so I moved them all into my BioComposting unit. Two weeks after setting out the bait I removed the bait boxes. The photo below shows my progress at that point.

bsfl-two-weeks-after-beginning

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