Agricultural Innovations Inc BSF podcast

Feb 122010
 

Frank Aragona of The Agroinnovations Podcast interviews me about black soldier fly culturing

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 Agroinnovations Podcast

Episode #78: The Black Soldier Fly (Part I)

“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.”

Episode #78: The Black Soldier Fly (Part II)

“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.”



Mythbusting black soldier flies

Sep 152008
 

bsf-magnifying-glass-b

There are more than 100,000 species of flies, but in most people’s minds a fly is a fly, period. The species most people automatically think of are the house flies, blow flies, and bottle flies. Our disdain for these pests is understandable because they are known transmitters of human diseases, but non-pest black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) are different in several ways. The most important difference is that BSF are not vectors of human pathogens. Black soldier flies rarely go into human habitats or land on people, and the adult black soldier fly doesn’t even eat during it’s short lifespan. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, on to the mythbusting. :)

Swarms of black soldier flies = myth

I’m convinced that most people imagine a swarm of black soldier flies hovering around a BSF composting unit such as a BioPod. They would be wrong. I’ve been culturing black soldier fly larvae for one and a half years and the greatest number of winged adults I’ve seen at any one time is less than 10. Most of the time when I check my BioPod there are no flies near it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before noon (apparently they sleep in), and you don’t see them when the sun is low or at night.

In case I haven’t made my point, BSF adults (winged stage) are relatively rare. One reason is that the adults only live a few days, just long enough to breed and lay eggs, and then they die. Contrast this with house flies that live 30 days or more. In the short period that BSF spend as adult flies there just isn’t enough time for big social gatherings such as swarms.

Black soldier flies pester people = myth

Black soldier flies can’t bite or sting and they don’t eat so they have no interest in people. As mentioned above you probably won’t see many BSF adults and if you do they will usually ignore you. On the rare occasions when a BSF adult lands on me it’s most often when I’ve been handling larvae and I have their scent on my hands. They land then because the subtle scent of BSF larvae is a powerful attractant to BSF females and if one lands on me I always pause to admire this beautiful beneficial insect. To be honest, I usually refer to any BSF adults I see around the BioPod as “the girls”, because males are not attracted to the unit. All of the BSF near the BioPod will be females looking for a good site to lay eggs.

BSF larvae are pests in honey bee hives = myth

I believe the BSF page at Wikipedia was the main source of this myth. Earlier versions of Wikipedia’s page about BSF stated that “The larvae can be destructive pests in honeybee hives”. There was no reference cited (that I could see) for that statement. I’ve searched the web for evidence that this is a true statement but I have found none. Perhaps the error happened because of reports that BSF larvae have been found in abandoned beehives. That is very likely since no self respecting BSF larvae would let perfectly good beehive waste go to…. waste! This is a very different scenario than the larvae being pests.

Today I spoke with Ellen Hudson, a previous head of the Apalachee Beekeepers Association, and she was unaware of any issues caused by BSF. If there really was an issue with beehives it would surely be a concern in this region where tupelo honey is a big business and BSF are plentiful.


To be continued…              solider

Take the black soldier fly challenge

Jul 292008
 

I believe black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens) represent the most logical method for dealing with the constant stream of putrescent waste that humans create. Putrescent waste is anything that gets putrid (rots) and is mostly wasted food.  BSF aren’t magic but it’s hard to imagine a much more efficient solution to a growing problem.

adult bsf

Bio-conversion

The process of feeding organic wastes to black soldier fly larvae is called bio-conversion. That’s because the process doesn’t exactly eliminate the garbage, it converts it into BSF larvae. Rotting garbage is a liability and BSF larvae are a valuable asset. You can read more about bio-conversion HERE.

BSF prepupal larvae

Generally accepted data about black soldier flies and larvae

  • They are not associated with the transmission of diseases.
  • They don’t bite or sting and they avoid human habitats.
  • Their presence in waste deters or even eliminates house fly reproduction in that waste.
  • Larvae rapidly consume almost any organic waste except for high cellulose items like yard waste or paper.
  • Larvae reduce the volume of household food waste by up to 95%.
  • A 2 foot (60cm) container of larvae can process several pounds of household food waste in 24 hours.
  • When larvae mature they will self harvest using a simple ramp system.
  • Live larvae are very nutritious and are readily consumed by many different animals (pigs, chickens, reptiles, fish, etc).
  • Meal made from dried larvae is roughly equal to Menhaden fish meal, a valuable and widely used ingredient in animal feeds.
  • BSF grubs can be processed to create bio-fuels and other valuable products

The challenge

I’m making the claim that bio-conversion of putrescent waste with BSF larvae is the best way to deal with the constant stream of rotting waste that goes into landfill. The challenge is simple, state any significant problem that might be caused by using BSF to convert our organic garbage into nutritious animal feed or high quality products for industry such as bio-fuels.

Let’s not wait

Burying our food waste in giant rotting mounds is ridiculous given the elegant solution represented by bio-conversion with black soldier fly larvae. The technology already exits and represents the essence of sustainablity. What in the world are we waiting for?

Collecting the immature larvae

Jul 252008
 

This method doesn’t involve the dark, prepupal larvae which are self-harvesting

The coffee colored black soldier fly grubs (prepupae) are the final stage before pupation into adult BSF (Hermetia illucens). To our advantage they are programmed by nature to crawl away from the food source in search of a suitable pupation site. In a properly designed BSF unit these larvae crawl up a ramp and drop into a collection bucket where they will live for weeks without any maintenance.

The method described below is for harvesting the earlier stages when the larvae are actively feeding and growing. It doesn’t work for the mature larvae because they don’t eat therefore aren’t attracted to the bait in the collection container. It works very well for the light colored immature larvae.

The Immature Larvae Collection Device or ILCD (old butter tub)

Take a cheap container and cut some small holes around the bottom edge.

immature larvae collector with fish pellets

(click on images to enlarge)

Add something delicious (any food scraps will do), and simply place it on the surface of the compost. I used moistened fish food because I’m training my fish to eat it and this is a good way to introduce them to the flavor (I feed the larvae to the fish). Just about anything will work, but fresher items will make handling the collected larvae more pleasant.

The photo below was taken 2 minutes after placing the tub on top of the compost.

immature larvae collector after 2 min

This is after 11 minutes.

immature larvae collector after 11 min

The photo below was taken 40 minutes after adding the container.

immature larvae collector after 40 min

This quick harvest totaled about 2 cups (.5 litre) of small to medium larvae. I don’t have many large larvae at this time due to the crash I caused in the colony a few weeks back. I do have a lot of larvae, just not large ones yet.

fishing, bait,

Feeding black soldier fly larvae to Redear Sunfish

Jul 232008
 

redear sunfish preparing for supper

I’ve been feeding BSF larvae to my redear sunfish (shellcrackers) everyday for about a week and they are taking them with enthusiasm. They have a preference for the immature larvae over the dark prepupal larvae, but they still eat the dark ones pretty well. I think the prepupal larvae might be more foreign to them than the light colored larvae, but I think with some conditioning they will eventually accept  them just as well. There are some individual fish that already take the prepupae well which is why I suspect it isn’t a taste issue or something like that.

YouTube Preview Image

(Wow. That video quality is terrible. I’m open to suggestions if anyone would like to offer some advice about uploading video. I’ll leave this up for now, but I have to do something! I tried blip.tv and PhotoBucket which were better quality, but the embedded players for these sites ruined the xhtml validation for my blog, the YouTube videos don’t.)

Here’s a link to a better quality version of the same video at Blip.tv – VIDEO

Update – August 14

These fish are in a pond that was built in January 2008 and I only stocked 24 adult redears. (I also stocked 110 very small redears in late March and you can see a few of them feeding with the larger fish in the video) At first when I began feeding them BSF larvae the fish were concentrated in one area of the pond because they were on spawning beds. This made it very convenient to hand feed them, but I assumed they would disperse once the spawning season passed. Well, the spawning seems to be over and they’re still concentrated in the same spot, and I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the daily offerings of black soldier fly larvae. Lately when I walk up to the feeding area I see the fish lining up just off the bank of the pond about one meter from the water’s edge. All fish are oriented on me as they wait for the rain of tender BSF morsels. They will swim into water that is only a few inches deep to snatch up the larvae. Previously I was unaware of the popularity of fly larvae as fish bait, but now I can understand why they are so effective.

If you’re a sensative person you may hesitate at the idea of sacrificing the larvae to fish this way but there is another way to look at it. In nature fly larvae have a high mortality rate and the balance of the population is based on the vast majority of them not surviving to reproduce. Two BSF can produce between 500 and 900 eggs depending on which report you read, and to maintain the normal population only 2 of those several hundred will survive to lay more eggs. I address this issue in more detail here: Feeding black soldier fly larvae to other animals

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