Black Soldier Fly Larvae

I've written about our challenges in dealing with food waste around here. We've tried freezing the food and taking it to the dump periodically and we've tried fermenting the food in a bokashi compost bin (more on that later). Neither of these have worked well for us. Food in the dump isn't good for a number of reasons and we had problems managing the bokashi... most of the time it was just plain gross. Then I learned about the black soldier fly (hermetic illucens).

Black Soldier Flies can be found throughout most of the United States. They are very interesting animals. They spend the bulk of their lives in the larval stage. Then, they lose their digestive system and crawl off to pupate. They emerge as black soldier flies and at that point, their sole purpose in life is to reproduce.

Since they no longer have a digestive system, the flies are no longer interested in food. They will not buzz your food, land on it or carry disease. They lay their eggs near rotting things and the cycle begins all over.

We can use this cycle to deal with our food waste AND turn that waste into chicken and fish food. Last year I purchased the Biopod at a conference. The Biopod is a black soldier fly (BSF) composted. Food scraps, and other waste goes in and BSF grubs come out. In addition, for every 100 pounds of scraps that go into the Biopod, 5 pounds of good compost come out.

We started the Biopod in March with feed corn soaked in water. After a few days, it had started fermenting. Within two weeks we had our first brood of grubs. They devoured everything we fed them! Within a few weeks of starting the Biopod, we were harvesting a regular supply of grubs. The chickens loved it! I loved it! We were turning our food scraps into health chickens and eggs.

Here's our stock of BSF larvae. They add up quickly!

 This is a rotisserie chicken I found in the very back of the freezer. I figured that after sitting three years in the freezer, it would make better food for them than for us. This is how the chicken looked the morning I put it in the BioPod.

This is later in the afternoon. The hungry BSF grubs are doing their work!

The next day, the chicken is completely gone - except for the bones.