This is topic is intended to document larger enclosed systems as opposed to "Small Scale Indoor Breeding" (link). These systems would be used for reasons such as:

• As breeders to get a head start on repopulating outdoor bins in the spring.
• To house bins to extend the BSF 'season' into fall when bins would normally be dormant.
• As year-round self contained systems to provide both a breeding environment and a warm operating environment for bins situated within the system.

Structures used would include cold frames, greenhouses and hothouses (heated greenhouses).

Some examples are:

agropisa's greenhouse (link).

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biobehaviorist's system (link)

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I believe Tarvus also has used a BioPod in a greenhouse tent.

Yes indeed. This was my second year using the "King Kanopy" greenhouse tent and it's still holding up remarkably well. I figure it will last me maybe two or three more years based on the way it's holding up so far. It's about time to take it down now though since our daily highs here are running in the high 80's and BSF are breeding outdoors for the last month or so.

I bought it from Northern Tool but now they are apparently carrying a different brand. Here's a link.
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200418025_200418025

I'm currently using it to house one of my aquaponics systems, but it was nevertheless filled throughout the winter with adult BSF from pupating larvae that crawled into it seeking warmth and humidity this winter.

I am in central California. I have seen BSF larve here and as soon as I confirm it I will post to the range board.

I just build a green house, 30x40 or so. It has a two layer sheeting that inflates during the coldest parts of the year to maintain about 55 to 60 degrees inside. I will add a heat source if i need to to grow during the winter months. I may even add LED lights to extend the growing season or set up a hydroponics system.

I own and operate a garbage business, my 10 acre micro farm is very near several restaurants owned by friends. I have an unlimited supply of food garbage. I could easily collect 50 to 100 lbs per day of food waste in less than a one mile radius of my farm. ( this is a huge amount of energy)

I want to set up a BSF composter to burn through as much garbage as possible during their season and then extend the BSF season as long as possible to produce feed for my chickens. I have 35 now but plan to add 100 more this spring.

My question is this, at what temperature do they start to go dormant??

In the green house do they breed and continue to grow at full speed if kept warm?

Do you think it's possible to keep them going all year long??

I have a greenhouse that has high ceilings and will have plenty of things growing in there including a lemon tree. Will this provide them with what they need to breed??

how sensitive is their breeding?? do they seem to breed under most conditions or do they need specific habitat??

My goal here is to produce chicken feed, as much as possible. We are also starting 15 pigs this year, and will try to set up a system for BSF to compost the manure from that system as well.

I want to take garbage in, and produce eggs and compost out. Because I have a unlimited supply of food waste and I don't want to feed it directly to the chickens or pigs I figure these larvae will be a good filter.

Do you think the preservatives in the food from the restaurant will come through the larvae and into the chickens, and then into the eggs???

I want to keep as much contamination as possible out of my system, and I don't want to feed the chickens or pigs the waste food directly for several reasons, But this waste food is a huge free energy source, I can't stand to throw it away any longer. I have to find a way to change this huge amount of food waste, ( I'm talking 10 or 15 tons per year) into energy for my farm. 15 tons of food waste will turn into at least 3 or 4 tons of larve right?? enough to feed hundreds of chickens as their protein source, add in some free range for greens and those chickens will be free to feed all year and will produce 40 or 50 dollars per day worth of free range eggs. This may sound crazy, but as soon as I could produce 50 bucks per day on this farm I can sell my business and retire to live off the land.

Any ideas you have would be great, thanks.

Flock'n Eggs!!!

Hi Justin1775 and welcome to our forum

Lots of questions. I'll try to answer a few or direct you to where you can find information. Hopefully others will respond too.

From http://www.esrint.com/pages/bioconversion.html

What Happens in Winter

BSF larvae have an amazing ability to dispose of putrescent waste. But as the temperature drops below 21 degrees, their ability to digest waste progressively grinds to a halt, and if they should freeze, they die. This tropical fly larva needs to be sustained at temperatures above 30 degrees if it is to continue to digest putrescent waste at the standard rate of roughly 15 kgs/m2 of unit surface per day.

The examples at the start of this thread are the only two that have been posted to the forum. There are large commercial operations but they're not sharing their information

They need warm temperatures and bright light. Sunlight is the best but artificial lighting will work too (link).

They will continue to eat even when temps drop, but like most critters, their metabolism will slow in colder temps. Obviously, you don't want them to freeze.



They will breed given temps above 80F during the day and perhaps 60F or so at night. Humidity is also important. They like high humidity. Hopefully your greenhouse can provide them these conditions.


Yes, if given sufficient warmth and humidity. You may or may not have year round breeding since much of breeding is light dependant. Full spectrum artificial light might help during the shorter days of winter.



More than likely, yes.




They need warmth (over 80F daytime temps and over 60F night), high humidity, sufficient daylight or full spectrum equivalent light, lekking sites (i.e. plants) and a sufficient population concentration in their captive area that they can find suitable partners to mate with. My experience with winter greenhouse breeding is roughly one egg cluster per day per 40 adult flies. Others on here have had success at a lower ratio than that, but that's a good rule of thumb in my experience.




Nope, I wouldn't worry about it. If you can compost it your BSF will digest it. In fact, you can feed BSF stuff that's a definite "no no" when it comes to composting or vermiculture.




Probably not. Though it can vary with quality of feedstock and conditions, realistically you could expect maybe one ton of larvae per year based on 15 tons of feed. Perhaps you can get more, but it's best to use conservative assumptions. Another good rule of thumb is that you can feed one pound of food per square foot of active colony surface area per day. Though you might get more efficient consumption in ideal conditions, that's a good planning number. 15 tons divided by 365 days equates to an ACTIVE colony surface area of roughly 82 square feet.

Hope these answers help!

I'm honored that my system was pictured above however, I just want to put a disclaimer out there, the bin in the picture is not functioning and has not been fully operational yet. It was merely a first attempt at a large scale bin that fell a bit short. I suggest looking at the thread to see more documentation of the multiple phases it has gone thru. I do want to say that it will be informative to anybody hoping to have an enclosed system, but probably not the best design to emulate. I am working on a new container design that will support a natural progression from grub to adult to egg all in one container. this is to avoid the mundane task of transferring grubs to different containers and will hopefully be operating this summer.

Thanks for the clarification biobehaviorist. It will be interesting to see how your system evolves and I hope you'll keep us posted.

10 pounds of pure BSF larvae....
I hope you enjoy!

Wow. You have 2 'biopod plus' bins inside your greenhouse, right? Is the other one doing as well?

BW,
I´m doing a lot of experiences on different ways to rear BSF. It all depends on what do you need as a final result. Biopod are helping me a lot to collect a huge amount of egg mass. I have 3 biopod inside my greenhouse and a population around 1500 - 2000 adults. This one give me as more as 100 egg mass a day.
2000 adults means around 250 new adult every day and 250 death after 8 days. So I may have around 250 couples every day which means around 125 egglaying collected in this 3 biopod.
As a result of it I have around a pound a day of grubs, and they are having 1.5 pound of food in each pod per day.

agropisa where do the larvae pupate in your greenhouse?

I use this to manage the different batches. There are around a pound in each weekly batch.

Nicely organized! Do you use sawdust or another medium?

I used to use coir, but nowadays I´m using the BSF final compost in order so save some money.
a VERY USEFUL TIP: bsf pupae dont like an environment too dry! Please don´t let them get thirsty! Keep the medium moist!
My problem is that the pupae of the same age will not transform in an adult in the same time! There is a huge diference in the batches.... I´m working hard to understand why it happens and what we can do to have all the batch cicle in the same time.

Thanks. I read of others using wood shavings or sawdust. I'm using a commercial small animal bedding (paper) product but that's mainly because it was readily available in my area.

That seems to agree with what biobehaviorist observed (link) with larvae collecting under a wet sponge. I keep the humidity high but don't actually wet down the material.

Is this natures way protecting the population by insuring they don't all emerge at the same time? This would prevent a generation from being wiped out by bad weather or heavy predation.

I´m not sure about it! I think that nutrition, weather and some other biological and physical issues have some influence over the batch homogeneity --> I´m working on it, but our winter time is coming and this problem may increase a little!

This batch is 3 weeks old; they all hatched on the same day. It seems unlikely that weather or nutrition had any role to play here?

Thought I'd cross post these pictures here as they show an example of a green house system. Tarvus describes this setup by Growing Power in Milwaukee http://www.growingpower.org/ in detail in his thread (link).


BSF larvae collection buckets and gutters


BSF bin w/collection gutters


BSF Bin