Hi BSF lovers! I´m from Brazil and I´m starting to study as many as I can about BSF. As an agricultural scientist I´m wondering how nobody had taught anything about it during my grade course. Anyway it isn´t late to learn. I hope to learn a lot from now, then I will start my colonies and after that..... I really don´t know where a I can get, but I´m sure that BSF is a way to a more sustainable word!

Ok... let´s stop this cold introductory text and ask you about some of my doubts:

Does someone know, how much waste (food) an avarage larvae eat from it´s egg to adult?
Does someone know the weight of an avarege pupae of BSF?

Thank you so much for any kind of help to my questions and I really hope to start helping you with some answers as soon as I start to put my hands on work!

Regards

Hi agropisa, welcome to the forum.

A good place to begin compiling BSF data is at http://biosystemsblog.com/.

Hey Agropisa,

I grow a lot of BSF larvae. I find the average mature larva weighs .08 grams. that equates roughly to:
5556larvae/kg
158larvae/oz
2525larvae/lb

I also estimate that 1000 larvae will, over their three week term as immature larvae, consume roughly 2 pounds of food waste per 1000 larvae. That works out to about .91 grams of food per larvae over a 21 day period. That's over eleven times his mature larvae weight over 21 days or a little over half his MATURE weight per day. If we assume an individual larva's average lifetime weight is one half his mature weight, well, that means he heats his own weight per day every day of his life! (If anything, that estimate may be low too!)

Thanks Tarvus!

Tarvus has a lot of experience raising BSF and he is a mad scientist.

Dear Tarvus (Our Mad Guru), I´m in doubt with the numbers:

5556larvae/kg --> It gives an avarege weight of 0.18 grams per larvae and not .08 grams as previous described.

You are correct agropisa. My mistake (that will teach me not to post numbers from memory!) A mature larvae weighs 0.18 grams on average.

Thank you!

I´m proud to be in contact with the finest researches of BSF in the world!

best regards