BACKGROUND: I started my bin a summers ago and left it alone for a while since I started losing hope in it. But alias I recently checked my bin and it was thriving with thrice the amount of larvae I’ve put in.

My first question is, how do I keep them warm? Frost is starting to hit and I think I would like to try to keep them alive.

My second question is, will the BSF come back to my bin when it’s warm again?

1 will they eat moldy food or is that something to avoid

2 im curious if they’re any hood at cleaning flesh off skulls and bones like turkey skeleton or deer skull and if they’d eat feather or fur in small amount

A local neighbor was kind enough to give me about half a coffee can of bsfl, and although I’ve been doing okay with my mealworm colony (I need to ask for tips there too though tbh), I’ve noticed some things going on with my bsfl. Do I need to be turning/rotating their substrate/the compost they’re in? When I check on them daily I notice about 3-4 crawling out of the lid but when I open the lid to see how, there’s no others trying to climb or anything. I saw something online mentioning I should use window screen or some sort of mesh to help with ventilation and where they can’t escape but if they’re already coming out of the lid then… would that work…? Is it too wet in there? Is that how they’re climbing? Any advice or mistakes to be mindful of and avoid would be helpful and very appreciated. I take pride in my animal care, and that now includes my bugs. If there’s something I can do to make em happier and healthier I’ll do it. I want to get comfortable and build confidence with raising mealworms and bsfl, and eventually I’d love to start a butterfly apiary but that won’t be until I have these lil guys’ needs down pat.

They’re currently in one of those black plastic storage totes with the red lids. I filled it roughly 2/3-1/2 of the way full with a mixture of compost, shavings, and kitchen scraps. There’s holes up top for ventilation, a little less than 1/4” in diameter. It used to be a worm bin for nightcrawlers but unfortunately life got in the way and I wasn’t able to keep up with it but I’ve moved it to a more readily accessible spot since then. I have it outside in partial shade, on the ground. The person who gave them to me had them in one of those bbq-sized compost turner barrels that sit on a stand, with the lid wide open. The barrel itself was pretty close in size to the bin I have them in now.

I catch spotted lanturn flies regularly with the bottle method and throw in a rubbing alcohol pad to suffocate them. Sometimes I forget to open the bottle the next day and they start to smell so I let them breathe for a bit with the lid off before I dump them in my compost bin. (The eggs won't hatch unless they were actually laid.)

Yesterday, I found this in one of the bottles. I looked around and saw that there were other groupings in several other bottles, even some empty ones!

Are these Black Soldier Fly eggs? I had some last year, but they were being bitchy about actually laying. If this SLF trick works, I'm going to freeze a bunch to use as my egg laying sites.

I found a discount link for Black Soldier Fly on Amazon

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Welp my first round of breeding in my tent went great. I was out there at 9 AM dancing in my underwear with my butterfly catching net when I first saw them catching each other in air and landing butt to butt. But now, after the majority of that generation died off, I'm left with very active decent population of pretty darn large flies dancing about in the air - but no one ever manages a soft enough landing to stay connected. It seems like they're too heavy or something. I've tinkered with my light setup, my heat, and my humidity, the proximity of a surface for them to land upon more gently - but I cannot get back to where I was right at the start - with a bunch of flies sitting together for many minutes clearly doing the deed.

My only hope is that they don't actually NEED to stay butt to butt? That maybe the transfer is happening in the air? The density isn't where it was, but it's still clearly an active airspace. Any suggestions?

hello BSF community! i live in long beach, california in a condo with my boyfriend. three days ago, i noticed a bug flying around inside our unit. i didn't think much of it, caught the bug and set it free outside. strangely, every day since then i have found the same species of bug inside our unit. today, i found two more crawling on the inside of the window. i identified it as a black soldier fly (photo attached) and have been intrigued as to how or why they are finding their way inside. from my research, i understand that they are benign and highly sought after for vermicomposting.

would it be unwise to try creating a habitable space for the adult flys to lay eggs indoors? would you have recommendations on how to do this? otherwise, i will just keep catching them and setting them free outside... but they seem to enjoy the inside of our unit....

For those of you with outdoor bins, what are ways you ensure your bins stay in range for humidity and heat levels? I noticed about a week ago the larvae weren’t getting enough food, now I’ve over saturated them with produce and some spoiled meat. I expected them to devour it quickly but today I checked and the meat seems untouched, and unfortunately maggots have gotten in.

They have a big ramp to get out and vertical slits wide enough to accommodate their exit. Also drainage holes in the bottom. They had just started to become bountiful and then I found them like this today. Should I throw everything out and start again? This bin is for my chickens 😭

The ants are as good at sniffing out trash as Black Soldier Flies. I've got a few more coffee cans on the way to set the legs in. I have considered putting something on the straps to repel the little buggers, but I'd rather not use any kind of pesticides at all on my place. The coons and possums are a big threat, too.

People putting their colonies inside their chicken runs, what do you do for ant control?

https://preview.redd.it/lltj58fkezrd1.jpg?width=2268&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1580eeee9f76a08ddd1ec606d629b50c24ad6207

https://preview.redd.it/zul7l5fkezrd1.jpg?width=2268&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9f246de1a09310a807441be82de2067c55472ebf

First time building a BSF 27Gallon tote. Some are climbing out using the giant tube but many are going up the side. Any tricks to keep them off the side? Or perhaps route them to a specific exit?

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I have three separate BSF bins...I farm them for my chickens. I haven't found a real efficient way to harvest them. Any ideas or tips? My bins are thriving well but it's a pain harvesting the larvae.

I am going to put ground up coffee grains in my BSFL bin as I have seen multiple sources that say to use that as the main substrate/alternate food source. What kind of coffee grains are the most nutritious for the larvae?

Trying different dyes on bsfl. Food coloring has a weak effect on them. I tried alcohol based dye and that worked better.

Is there a good way to breed them on a small scale inside? I don't need a ton, I just want a few extra to feed as an alternative for my reptiles

I've got a BSFL bin made out of a esky (cooler) with electrical conduit on the inside to allow them to self-harvest. I've got some 25mm electrical conduit coming out of the top, with a corner elbow which has 25mm shorter peices. I'm not sure if they are big enough because the flies dont seem to want to go in.

If you have a similar setup, what size entrance do you use?

Started a bin 3 weeks ago and started throwing extra larvae from my compost tumbler into the bin. Initially overfed and was overrun with houseflies. Set some traps and got the population down. Had at least 5 sets of BSF eggs laid in my bin and those have hatched and are doing well. Houseflies are starting to increase again as well. Will they go away as these BSFL get larger, or will I always need to be careful about not putting too much excess food in the bin?

I can get some BSF from my Uni's fly researchers, but I don't know how to build a rig for harvesting them? Is this practical in a small apartment?

I am wondering if there is any information out there regarding the nutritional composition of adult BSF? There’s plenty of info about the larvae but none about the adults. I’ve just started my first colony and whenever an adult fly dies I feed it to my pet mice who really enjoy them. It is for this reason that I’d like to know how nutritious they are. I’d imagine not much since they would have wasted away by that point since they don’t eat as adults.

I have been struggling with harvesting BSFL from my bins. The pupae will sometimes use the designated escape ramps for a few days, but they always eventually go back to crawling up the sides of the bins and squirming out between the lid and the body, even when the lid is weighed down. I had trays set up under the bins to catch them but after a while something was coming in to eat the pupae overnight so I lost most of them. I finally gave up on all that mess and am so glad I did!

Now I have one set up as a bin within a bin, with room inside the outer bin for the pupae to fall into it. I close the outer bin every night and remove the inner bin every few days to harvest those.

The other one is set up in the quail pen with cinderblocks and a dust bath underneath. Some of them are probably being lost into the ground, but most of them seem to be falling into the dust bath and the quail are getting so many BSFL I have started to sift the excess out of the dust bath every morning to freeze for winter.

This set up is yielding ten times the number of pupae every day than from the old set up. Wanted to share it with you all in case there is anyone else out there who hasn't been able to make the regular approach work.

Edit: added images. It's nothing fancy, as you can see! The mosquito net keeps the house flies out. Maybe it's because the bins are so close to the quail cages, but there are a lot of flies around.

https://preview.redd.it/lugb56ezi8jd1.jpg?width=1512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4d7c502b747e4bf380c132a31d180265f5e052d

https://preview.redd.it/bw1hxx10j8jd1.jpg?width=1512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9119afd63c140cc0546fe58b3eb055c98b8d4c67