A New Post to Celebrate the New Year- Different "baits" to Attract and Induce Egg-Laying Behavior of the Black Soldier Fly

Hello Everyone- I hope you all are well and enjoying a wonderful new year!  

I believe 2017 was a great year for BSF- the blog has been a lot of fun and a success (averaging 6,000 to 8,000 reads per month)- My hope it is serving a role with the BSF community.

But I am optimistic 2018 will be even better. The frequency of BSF publications is ever increasing- and I will do my best to stay on top of everything and make sure to convey these papers and their major findings to you as quickly as possible.

With that said- a paper that just came out examined different "attractants" for ovipositing (egg-laying) BSF.  

Comparison of the performance of different baiting attractants in the egg laying activity of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens L.) 

This study was conducted by researchers in Kenya (awesome to see such a global effort exploring BSF and its benefits) and published in the Journal of Entomology and Zoology Studies.

​Basically, the authors wanted to explore different attractants for ovipositing BSF. They used fish, fruit, cow manure, and frass (larval manure - in this case most likely they used larval frass mixed with digest- distillers’ grains and cookies mixture). 

They placed these materials individually in containers and then examined the grams of eggs deposited in egg traps associated with each container. 

What did they find?

1. These materials were attractive and adults did lay eggs.
2. Manure had the greatest amount (g) of eggs deposited.
3. Frass was second in terms of attraction

The challenge with these results is the level of variation across treatments. Based on the figure, the level of variation would indicate these resources were equally attractive so concluding one is more attractive than another is difficult.

What this work does demonstrate is the larval substrate does play a role in terms of attracting egg-laying adults.  So, if someone wanted to tackle a critical question to BSF mass production- I think this would be a great topic. 

Imagine if you could get flies to lay eggs where you wanted... precisely.  

Author

Jeffery K Tomberlin, PhD, BSF Egger 
Twitter: @FliesFacility
Director, EVO Conversion Systems