A Small Step Backwards

Today felt like a small step backwards- it was overall pretty disappointing. We didn't see the large female adult return, neither did we see any eggs in the pod. We had seen her every day since her emergence, so to not see her today was especially worrisome, and made us think that predation may have unfortunately played a role.

Also, we noticed some very tiny crawl-off (pupa). We were worried that these tiny tiny pupa would not have enough physical resources in order to metamorphosize, but upon a literature review, this just means that from a small pupa will emerge a small BSF.

Today, what looked like a small (3-4 mm) female adult fly landed on the book that Rylo was reading. But we weren't able to get a good enough of a look at her so I have to keep the official count of female adults at 1.

Also, we saw some really interesting looking flies that looked remarkably like BSF (with waspish waists, etc), but they were irridescent blue/green, with heads that were entirely blue. Hopefully we'll be able to see them again and catch a closer glimpse.

And the bad news keeps coming. Today, we saw pest flies at the pod for the first time. We really hope that the synonome is working and that today is just a fluke. It is especially important that the synonome is working when we have adult females, because they need to clearly know where they need to come back to to lay eggs.

Let's hope next week will be more successful. Happy BC Day weekend!

The First Lady + more good news

Today, the crawl-off bucket had 20 pupa. The maggots also completely devoured the chicken feed, and hopefully the remainder of maggots will pupate within the next week or so. Strangely, there were also a few fungus maggots in the main part of the pod. This is the first time Rylo or myself have seen anything other than BSF within the pod (except, of course, for that one time a pest fly flew in, they buzzed right out again).

And on to the good stuff . . we have males! Four, to be exact. However, one isn't in such great shape- he has the same wing deformity that our previous two adult males had. Rylo and I hypothesize that this is due to low humidity but we'll have to fact check that one.

Not to end on a sour note or anything, but we do have one concern. Today, we clearly saw a large, healthy female maggot eating a pupa. The best that we can hope for is that BSF can tell sick from healthy pupa. Perhaps, the healthier pupa are the ones that crawl off (in to the bucket) when they are very mature larvae while the pupa that are in less than perfect health remain in the main part of the pod?

Day Camp + a Surprise

Today was overall a good day. Rylo and I gave an ~15 minute presentation to the 6/7-year olds attending Day Camp at UBC Farm. We started off by feeding a few maggots to the chickens, then took the kids over to the pod and explained how it worked. They were an inquisitive bunch and seemed most happy when they were allowed to hold the maggots themselves.

I had to leave right after the presentation to get to work so I wasn't able to be there for the wonderful surprise but . . . a few hours later, around 1pm, I received a phone call from Rylo telling me that we officially had our first adult female emerge! We're hoping that a few adult males will emerge so that she'll have some choices. Then, hopefully there's some attraction and egg-making. If we get some eggs in the next few days that would be absolutely amazing!

So yes, overall a good day. Giving the presentation to the kids was a growth experience- I still need to work on getting over my shyness in front of big groups. Baby steps . .

Temperature Update #3/Photos !!

Today, 27 July @ 10am, in the last 24 hours, max. temp was 22.4C, min was 19.6C. Not great, but we do have crawl-offs, which means the pod was warm enough for the maggots to mature, and crawl off to pupate. And the silver lining about this issue with temperature that we are attempting to remediate is that the lower temperatures will slow the rate of maturation, so that not all of the maggots will mature in to pupa and crawl off next week. Also, it does not look as though the maggots have fed at all- the feed dish (which used to be the prized possession of Rylo's cat) is completely full.

Today the crawl off count is 3 females and 6 males. Again, good odds- the ladies have some choices! Hope they make the right ones, and we get those coveted eggs in a few weeks.

Again, there were no pest flies around the bucket (we were very happy to see).

And . . here are the photos!!

Photo 1: The BioPod. Here I am holding the crawl-off bucket. The maggots are within the large grey container, and when they are ready to pupate, they crawl off (through the silver hose that you can see hanging down) in to the crawl-off bucket, that contains sawdust. The BSF instinctively knows that as a pupa, it prefers drier conditions and that the bucket is the place to be.

Photo 2: You can see the sawdust in the crawl-off bucket.

Photo 3: Some pupa! The dimorphism between the sexes during the pupal stage is quite apparent- contrary to what you may be thinking right now, the 3 large pupa on the left are female, and the 6 smaller pupa on the right are male.

Photo 4: Putting the crawl-off bucket back on the biopod after transferring the pupa to the larger bucket with all of the pupa. We have upgraded the bird cage that we were using before to a large 5-gallon bucket.

Again, these photos were taken at UBC Farm.

Wish me luck on my presentation to the kiddies tomorrow!!

How to Keep the Maggots Warm and Happy?

Rylo has proposed a solution to keep the maggots warmer, and thus happier and more active. When they are more active, they eat more, and mature faster which is what we want at this stage in the game.

He suggests what I think is a very solid idea: Put the chicken feed in an insulated cup, which will keep the feeding maggots warmer than the surrounding culture. We may even drill small holes in to the insulated cup so that only small maggots can enter. And just to be clear, by insulated cup, we mean (for example) the lid to a thermos.

I'll keep you updated on whether this works or out- we just introduced the thermos lid today.

Temperature Update #2

The pod was checked at 1pm today.

The temperature of the pod during the last 24 hours had a maximum of 22.5C and a minimum of 19.4C. Not great. And the maggots were clearly more dormant. Looks like Rylo and I will have to bust out our thinking caps and scheme up a way to make sure the temperature stays much higher.

But there is better news from today. In the pupa or 'crawl-off' bucket, we found 16 females and 49 males. Pretty good odds for the ladies. They'll be able to choose which guy suits their fancy. And hopefully this means we'll be seeing some eggs in the next few weeks! And hopefully these eggs will be laid in the pod, as the female adults will be attracted back to the pod by the synonome created by the maggots. (But as I've said before, I plan on doing an entire post on what exactly a synonome is, and how if differs from a pheremone).

With a couple thousand maggots, we can expect a steady supply of pupa/crawl-offs.

Hopefully I'll have more good news to report in the next few days to come . .

More Have Arrived

Today, we were happy to have received another shipment of 1700 maggots. They went straight to the Farm, to make a grand total of about 2500 BSF currently in the biopod.

Another 10 pupa were in the crawl-off bucket, and were transferred to the bird cage, the home of all of our BSF pupa.

In other good news, it does look as if our maggots are producing a synonome that is keeping pest flies away. Even though our biopod is a mere 50 meters from the big, smelly compost pile, Rylo and I have seen only one pest fly buzz around our culture (when we lifted the lid on the pod), and even this guy left quite quickly.

I know the terms 'crawl-off bucket' and 'lid' on the pod probably don't make a ton of sense to you; I plan on taking pictures early next week, and it will all become clear- that's a promise!!

Also, just received word that Rylo and I will be giving a presentation about our precious BSF the morning of next Wednesday. Our audience will be the 6- and 7-year olds that attend Day Camp at UBC Farm, and our presentation will be part of the ever anticipated Critter Week.