good eye! Yes, I was curious about the temperature in the grubs-box. At a room temperature of 21,6°C (70,9F) I measured 43°C (109.4F) between the maggots.

The larvae do generate a lot of heat and there has been some experimenting with keeping colonies active outside during the winter with insulated bins. This site reported "The difference in temperature between inside and outside the unit can exceed at times 82F or 45 C." In the link below look under What Happens in Winter for a graph and some info.
http://www.esrint.com/pages/bioconversion.html

As I mentioned earlier, I have a egg-laying-hatching box in my fly breeding box. Which I remove every couple of days/weeks to remove the maggots and put them in the grub raising box. Here is a photo of this egg-laying-hatching-box. In the scale up you can see a clutch:

Any idea of the humidity (RH%) in your bins?

no idea regarding the humidity in my breeding box, never messured it.

earthtiger do the flies hit your light or is it behind a screen? When I tried this with a 23 watt Compact Fluorescent Light the BSF were attracted to the light and bumped into it like other flying insects do. Although they didn't seem to be hurt by contact with the CFL I'd be worried about having any type of a hotter light inside the screen as the flies might be hurt.

Yes, the try to fly in the direction of the light in bump into it. The lamp I use has a glass panel.

Hi everyone,
Inspired by your stories on captive breeding, I decided to try this for myself.

a. The lights that I used were: 1 x 55 W Osram Dulux L /840
http://www.lightonenergy.co.uk/Sylvania ... l-4pin.htm
and 2 x 18 W Sylvania Daylight tubes
http://www.lightonenergy.co.uk/Daylight ... activa.htm
b. The enclosure measured 24“ x 24“ x 24“, built under the workbench in my garage.
c. Lights were run from 9.00 AM to 3.00 PM every day for 7 days. Apart from that, the flies were in complete darkness. After 7 days, 28 of the flies had died, some must surely have escaped, and there were 8 survivors.
d. I added a shallow pan with water, and also a green branch. I cannot say if they served any purpose. I never saw the flies drinking, and they mostly ignored the branch, preferring to sit on the walls and floor.
e. The ambient temps were around 25-31*C (77-88*F) so heating was not an issue.

The photo’s are here: http://s1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee3 ... 20Indoors/

01 Overall View


02 Enclosure


03 Lights


04 New Kids


05 Mating


06 Egg Traps


07 Egg Clusters


08 Incubator


09 Hatching


10 Two Weeks Old

Pete thank you for sharing your info and photos. I've edited your post to display your photos directly as shown here.

I have to agree that standing water and plants are not really required. As a matter of fact I've seen the flies drown in standing water when I used shallow pans. Instead I mist the walls and screen daily and have noticed the BSF appearing to drink from the beads of water.

Any idea what the humidity was in your inclosure?

BW, I don't have an instrument, but I would guess it varied between 70-90%.
Some days can be quite uncomfortable . . at least for us weak humans :)
Thanks for fixing the photo's.

Taking my inspiration from the preceding posts detailing successful breeding under artificial lighting I gave it a try with three Compact Fluorescent Lights rated at a total of 4100 lumens (two 23 watt 1600 lumen and one 14 watt 900 lumen) in reflectors immediately above the screen over the top of my bin.

I observed the first coupled mating pair today and hope to find some egg clusters over the next few days

So far lots of mating activity but no egg clusters. About 15 flies have emerged and there's lots of activity when the lights are on. My bin sits close to where I work on my computer and sometimes the flies are loud enough to attract my attention. I believe a lot of this is just male terratorial displays but mating is also noisy with both flies buzzing loudly with their wings. It can also be quite a rough and tumble process which is, in certain aspects, as entertaining as TV wrestling so I set up my camera in the bin for a couple of hours to record the action.

I definitely am not an entomologist but I don't believe any of the pairs in the video actually mated as they usually stay 'en copula' (coupled tail to tail motionless) for an extended period.



I have seen a pair 'en copula' coupled end to end for over an hour.

Still no egg clusters to be found. There are 20+ flies now and lots of activity when the lights are on. I believe a lot of this is just male territorial displays as there are lots of flies in a small volume. This blog post on the North Carolina State University Insect Museum site (link) mentions that "The males wait for females at lekking sites that they defend against intruding males. When an intruder is spotted it will by “tackled” by the defending male." This certainly describes what I've seen where one fly grapples another in mid air then the pair drop to the bin floor with wings flapping madly. This activity can last a minute or more with the pair becoming airborne in short hops. It ends without the long coupling tail to tail which I'm assuming is actual mating.



As for the lack of egg clusters the females could be laying their eggs hidden elsewhere in the bin. Maybe there are just a lot of male flies in the bin. I still can't reliably determine their sex at a glance.

Looking back to my first experiment (link) it was three weeks from when I first observed a mating pair to when the first egg clusters were found. It's only been about a week so I'm still optimistic.

What are you using as bait, BW?

Moist used coffee grounds and the active BSFL 'pudding' (my rearing tub is in the bin). I'm reluctant to try any of the smellier options as the bin is in my residence.

Finally an egg cluster! A relief after seeing mating (coupling end to end) on an almost daily basis but no eggs in any of the planned ovipositing sites. As with my first experiment the egg cluster was laid in the container of used coffee grounds which is kept moist and humid. I've decided not to move the egg cluster into a warmer more humid incubation container but will see how the eggs fare as is.

I've discovered a few more egg clusters in the voids in the used coffee grounds and some new hatchlings. It looks like the third generation will live on

congratulations!

Thanks and thank you again for sharing your information. It was a great help.