I’ve updated this post because our forum is up and running now. With a huge amount of help from Mike, A.K.A. BorealWormer, we are now registering members. Mike also did most of the work on our BSF Locator map. Links are in the upper right column of our home page, or you can click FORUM or LOCATOR MAP. Please feel free to give us feedback about the forum.
(Virtual Scratch n’ Sniff v6.2)
It’s more accurate to say that a black soldier fly composter has a subtle, earthy aroma, plus the smell of whatever waste you’re processing. Some people compare the basic odor of a BSF colony to wet straw, but the main point is that it is not an offensive odor. If you’re smelling something foul in your BSF composter it’s not the larvae or their castings, it’s something else such as anaerobic bacteria and you need to change how you’re managing the system.
If you added the food shown above to a properly functioning BSF composter it would smell like those foods more than anything else. I realize you won’t be processing fresh food like that pictured above, but the point is that if you did then the aroma would be very similar to the fresh product. For example, once I added an entire loaf of stale cinnamon bread to my 5 gallon DIY bucket composter which I keep by the back door of our house. I walked by the composter a few hours after adding the bread and I was surprised by the delicious aroma of cinnamon. It’s not that the odor was just tolerable, it was appealing. Most of the time you probably won’t be adding something as aromatic as cinnamon in large quantities, so for the most part you shouldn’t notice anything but the subtle odors of the food scraps you’re processing. If you add bad smelling waste to your BSF unit it will smell similarly bad until the waste has been consumed.
Chronic bad odors can occur in a BSF unit, but it is a sign of imbalance which can usually be remedied fairly quickly. I know that some people reading this will be skeptical, especially those who have tried working with BSF with limited success, but I assure you I’m not exaggerating. I’ll be working on this post more in the near future and I will list several references to back up my assertions. I will also cover the causes of bad odors in detail as well as the remedies. For now I’ll add a quick quote from Kelly Slocum, a lady who has worked extensively with earthworms and also has considerable experience with black soldier fly larvae:
“I’ve worked on a few BSF waste processing systems, two of which were designed so that raw waste (usually hog manure) was processed initially by the BSF larvae, the poop from which (pretty liquid-y stuff) was stabilized by earthworms. These are remarkably efficient systems that process massive volumes of material each day and render the smelliest waste materials essentially odorless in just a few hours. I cannot emphasize enough the benefit of these flies or their suitability for working in conjunction with earthworms!” – Kelly S (SOURCE)
If you have experience working with BSF and can confirm my claim that foul odors are not a necessary aspect of it I hope you will post a comment below describing your experience.
That’s all for now, but please check back soon!
Agroinnovations.com is a great source of information regarding sustainable agriculture. In addition to this podcast you can find 77 previous episodes that I think you’ll find very interesting.
“The Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) has many remarkable characteristics that make it useful to human beings. In this episode, I am joined by Jerry of blacksoldierflyblog.com. Jerry and I discuss the lifecycle, morphological characteristics, and population dynamics of the Black Soldier Fly. We also discuss strategies for attracting and managing a healthy colony. This is Part I in a two part series.”
“In the second part of my interview with Jerry from blacksoldierflyblog.com, we discuss use of BSF for decomposing manures, including human manure, the quality and volume of compost produced, fly larva as the primary product of BSF composting, biological racism against the Black Soldier Fly, and BSF with California Red Worms.”
I recently collected a newly laid clutch of black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens)eggs for a photographic study of their development and I isolated three of them for the photos. I placed the three individuals and the remaining few hundred BSF from that clutch into identical containers. I didn’t keep detailed records, but there is an interesting comparison that I believe illustrates the flexibility of BSF development.
Temperature and humidity were approximately the same for both batches of larvae. The large larvae is one of the three that was separated for the photos and all three are similar in size. The small larvae is from the more crowded container which held the bulk of the larvae. The same type of food was available to both groups, but I can’t attest to the quality of the food in the more crowded environment that produced the smaller larvae. From casual observation it appeared that there was always food available to both groups. The most obvious difference between the two containers was the density of larvae. The small larvae where moved into a larger container six days after hatching and seem to be healthy and growing, but are still relatively small.
I imagine any properly educated researcher would not be surprised by this difference in development, but to this layman it’s very interesting.
solider
