BSF - Hermetia illucens

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Comment by Kevin R on October 30, 2009 at 2:53pm

I looked outside on the balcony where my Worm and BSFL bin are, and low and behold, I saw an adult BSF! I am not sure if it hatched from one of my BSFL, or was just attracted to the smell of the BIN. I hope it laid some eggs before it left!

Given that it is almost November, I was very surprised to see an adult around.

Comment by Kevin R on October 25, 2009 at 1:02pm

Well it looks like my BSFL are having a second wind. I opened the worm bin today and I saw a half loaf of bread I put in the bin earlier in the week teeming with BSFL. The weather warmed up more this week so that may have contributed. Interesting enough, there are baby BSFL on the bread as well...

Comment by D S Foxx on October 19, 2009 at 4:00pm

Try adding some used coffee grounds or other food and see. Grubs begin to move toward dormancy at @65F bin-temperature, and any non-dormant larvae will die if frozen, but if the outside temperature was only briefly that cold and there were enough grubs that the ones in the middle and bottom of the mass stayed warm, they'll come up for food. (You could then move any more active ones to a smaller container and insulate it.) Alternately, just top the bedding with a few inches of soil or dried leaves to encourage dormancy and wait for spring.

DSF
http://bokashislope.blogspot.com
sighted today: ladybugs, dragonflies, adult black soldier flies, honey bees. Nope, not winter yet here.

Comment by Kevin R on October 19, 2009 at 11:53am

They are still light colored.

Comment by Andrew on October 19, 2009 at 10:48am

Kevin, are your grubs still light colored or have they turned a dark coffee color? If they're still light, I wonder if you could put your bucket in the sun on a warm day and get them going again. Otherwise it sounds like they'll just pupate in the bin if it's not too wet and they'll hatch/emerge in the Spring and hopefully come back to lay eggs.

I left mine outside last night, but temps only reached low 50s. Grub bedding was high 80s this morning. It was over 100 late last night.

Comment by Kevin R on October 19, 2009 at 9:44am

Well I just checked the BSFL bucket and the BSFL are clearly either dorment or dead. Most didn't move, a few moved very very little. Last night we reach close to 32 F so I guess the cold finally got to them. I did not have a large enough population to really get the head and churning going. Hopefully the scent will still remain and BSF will lay eggs there in the spring.

Comment by Andrew on October 15, 2009 at 11:13am

I just did. Check my blog post for updates later today:
http://vermicomposters.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bsfl-experiment-the-grubs-have

Comment by Kevin R on October 15, 2009 at 7:52am

Have you placed the internal BSFL bin inside the worm bin yet? I am wondering how much it will actually increase the temperature of the other bin.

Comment by Andrew on October 14, 2009 at 10:21pm

I'm only on day 3 of my first BSFL bin. It seems the internal bin temp depends more on what you feed the grubs rather than what the ambient air temp is. Ambient temp has ranged from 63-68, but the bin temp started at 77 and peaked recently at 103F. If it gets any hotter, I may remove the insulation.

Comment by Kevin R on October 11, 2009 at 10:32am

Well I just checked in on my BSFL bucket, and even though the temperature here has dropped into the 50s and 60s, the BSFL are still going pretty strong. I put three frozen whole apples (not cut up) in the bucket about 4 days ago. I checked today and 2 of the 3 are gone! I mean completely gone... The third is relatively untouched. This is better than I hoped considering there is only about a 1/4 gallon of BSFL in this DIY bucket, and the temperature is below the optimal level for them.

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