In the second part of my interview with Jerry from blacksoldierflyblog.com, we discuss use of BSF for decomposing manures, including human manure, the quality and volume of compost produced, fly larva as the primary product of BSF composting, biological racism against the Black Soldier Fly, and BSF with California Red Worms.
I also read some listener email and comments. Useful links below:
BioPod and Black Soldier Fly Community Forum
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5 responses to “Episode #79: The Black Soldier Fly (Part II)”
My first experience with black soldier fly was in my worm bin. As the weather warmed up they ate up all of the earthworm food. They are so repulsive to the earthworm that the worms dig to the bottom of the bin to hide. My best black soldier fly populations were in chicken manure and quail guano. Some of the largest and most productive populations of BSF were accidental. I think one of the things that is most fascinating it the AMOUNT of food they eat is a short time. The heat generated from BSF larvae is awesome. I did enjoy feeding the grubs back to the chickens and quail.
Solid interview.
This may be a good time to link to:
>>> Joseph Jenkins’ “Humanure Handbook”: free to read and download online. Not a perfect book but such a fundamental topic, touched on in this episode, on how to treat your “waste”. Sawdust bucket toilet is the most simple, ridiculously underutilized manure-composting system. Slums of the world take note!
http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html
http://humanurehandbook.com/contents.html
>>> And, my old favorite, “Waste=Food”, the best video on William McDonough and Michael Braungart of “Cradle to Cradle” fame.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3058533428492266222#
Yes, the Humanure Handbook was a life-saver for me during my Peace Corps service, as I dumbly mucked around with alternative sewage systems. I realized quickly that mixing feces with water and creating sewage is probably one of the dumbest things human-beings can do.
I have a pretty good handle on using the sawdust toilet, but still need to refurbish an outside storage area I have to make it a comfortable shitter. Definitely on my to-do list. Once I get that running, and once I get a biopod colony established, I’d like to experiment with giving the humanure to the BSF larva.
Also on the list is installing dual-flush toilets in the house. Still mixing water with excrement, to be sure, but the efficiency is several orders of magnitude better than old-school 6 gpf toilets, and the Municipality here will give me a $200 rebate on my water bill per toilet installed.
Albert, if I didn’t mention it in the interview it’s good to point out how much heat the BSF larvae generate as they metabolize waste. The optimal temperatures I referred to in the interview were internal temps, not ambient. With simple insulation and regular feeding it’s possible to maintain a colony with an internal temperature in the 80’s (26-32 C) even with outside temps at or below freezing. The other side of that is the need to ventilate a colony in warm weather. The heat from BSF activity is one problem faced by those who want to combine them with worms in the same container (or those who have no choice).
Btw, I’ve never heard anyone say that worms are bothered by the presence of BSF larvae. Of course the heat and the domination of the food do put the worms at a disadvantage. My guess is that the worms you mentioned were mostly trying to avoid the heat. As I mentioned above I have communicated with a handful of people who are experimenting with combining the two species although I’m not too optimistic about the odds.
Thanks Frank for covering this topic. From what I’ve seen most people get into cultivating the BSF to have big fat bugs to feed to chickens and fish. Youtube is full of videos of folks doing this: one is posted here along with my interview of Scotty Kellogg about his own use of BSF:
http://www.grist.org/article/black-fly-magic/
I was disappointed to not hear more discussion of municipal level use of this fly for composting putrescents like dairy products, meat scraps, roadkill, whatever. I think that could divert a lot of material currently headed to landfills while creating soil amendments and protein sources for growing food for people.
Erik