29 August 2008
(Bogotá, Colombia) – after two months of construction, BioSystems Design LLC has completed its Black Soldier Fly Mating Facility. The completion of the mating facility marks the end of the second construction phase on the larvae-meal production plant. The mating facility will provide the optimum conditions for the black soldier fly larvae to mate and lay eggs.
BioSystems Design’s primary goals with the plant are to produce larvae-meal and process food wastes. However, not all larvae can be processed into larvae-meal. It is necessary to allow some percentage of the larvae produced to mature into flies and reproduce. This maintains large populations in the plant while larvae are being harvested. The mating facility permits BioSystems Design to observe the mating populations and egg production and provide the optimum conditions for reproduction.
This achievement by BioSystems Design puts it another step closer to operating its prototype design for a large food waste processing and larvae-meal production plant.
Dear sir,
I have seen the domestic-sized biopod on your website/blog. Do you also have a larger model for use in restaurants? I would like to buy some to rent out to restaurants along with a servicing contract. Is anybody already doing this?
Look forward to hearing from you.
Gerald van Koeverden
How is the mating facility going? Curious as to how much space it takes up since I’m in a cold climate and breeding would have to be done indoors for several months of the year.
Hey Jon! Its going well so far. We’ve got our first eggs. Sheppard and Tomberlin have a great article called “Rearing Methods for the Black Soldier Fly” (2002) that is available on Ingenta Connect for $25. It may also be available on the pondboss.com Black soldier fly thread. To save you some trouble, they go into some discussion about minimum sizes of netting enclosures:
“Tingle et al (1975)… reported that mating and oviposition were observed “often” in a 3 x 6.1 x 1.8 m cage held outdoors. In addition, mating was observed in a .76 by 1.14 x 1.37 m cage held outdoors, but not when held in the greenhouse.”
“No mating or egg collections occurred in two small cages (53 x 91 by 53cm) and (38 x 46 x 38cm)”
What I’d take away from that is the following: 1. A minimum cage size is required. 2. Greenhouses pose difficulties for larvae mating and obtaining large amounts of fertilized eggs.
On the latter we’re still examining closely what those difficulties are exactly. It very likely has to do with light transmission. You may wish to experiment with light bulbs that replicate full spectrum sunlight as the article notes that, “sunlight was reported to encourage mating.”
I’d be very interested to know what bulbs you experiment with and how it turns out!
Any update on how the mating facility is going?
Hey Mike! Just posted up for you our latest update! Where are you located and are you working on a colony as well or whats your interest in BSF?
Thanks for the update and congratulations on the successful trial. I do not have a colony but
I’m fascinated by the potential of BSF for waste handling.
I live in Alberta Canada where the winters are very cold so indoor/greenhouse breeding would be required. In addition I believe BSF are not native here and so any colony would need to be kept in a captive facility if importation is even allowed.