Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Welcome!

Thank you for visiting this weblog about the Black Soldier Fly. There is a paucity on the internet of relevant and practical information on BSF and its sustainable applications. This site was created for the purpose of pooling existing knowledge, in the hope that it may become the definitive clearinghouse for online discussion about Hermetia illucens. Please contribute or leave a comment.

Sincerely, Moderator

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great blog topic! I look forward to seeing future posts.

Anonymous said...

we started with using BSF larvae meal adding it to a commercial ration while the other treatment was not added with BSF larvae meal giving it to broiler chickens for a two week period only. Statistically, the treated birds were heavier than the non treated ones.
my problem is on the production of the BSF larvae meal due to its very low recovery (about 15%) only.

Greenie said...

The bioconversion rate of BSF, on a mixture of ordinary food scraps, is approx. 15-20% - correct. In the US, this is currently a waste product which can be normally obtained without cost; the more kitchen scraps you divert, the more grubs you can produce. Bioconversion to BSF basically hinges on your ability to secure the maximum quantity of food waste. Additionally, my recommendation is to feed chickens up to 1/3 of their diet with insects.

Unknown said...

I am very interested in the BSF can I help to seed, the way and the procedure how to make saving the environment in Semarang Indonesia, warm greetings from semarang

Unknown said...

I am using my biopod since early April 2011. It was seeded with BFS larvae from another location and the BSF population was quite good. The biopod was working properly until I moved last week to a new location (very close to the beach). At that moment, it was more than half full with partly decomposed green waste from a vegetable market.
Unfortunately, the biopod was kept in full sun for four days, at temperatures up to around 40 degrees at noon and 30 degrees at night. During this time it was not attended to: i.e. no aeration and no waste added.
When I recovered my biopod earlier this week, it was dead. Before moving the biopod, there were plenty of adult, near adult larvae and other larvae at all stages of development in the biopod, but going through the waste today I can find only dead larvae and no new larvae.
Anyone has a suggestion? I suppose the larvae died from heat stress and lack of aeration, but why are there no new larvae? Do the dead larvae keep the egg-laying flies away?

Greenie said...

@ Jozef - it was probably extreme temps which did them in. The colonies, once crashed, need to be discarded into a worm or compost bin and then restarted. The anaerobic conditions produced from crashed colonies seems to deter natural re-starts.