To begin with Gen Sir did a superb work in setting it up with all the investments made in racks, trays and time. Well he is quite ahead than me, and his approuch is quite hybrid in sense that not only Sir has read Literature on BSFly, also started with doing experiments of his own, considering factors such as larval density, amount of food given.
To start with Gen Sir has followed Modular setup where larva and food are separated on bases of when they are started into trays and kept as batches.
Trust me the larva are healthy, still his experiment with other different food load on different trays has resulted in new finding that with lower number of 5-doll (from 0.5g eggs), we are getting better out comes than starting with lets say 5-doll from 2g eggs. Then comes the food given, well the trays which were given food in distributed manner, the food was better consumed compared to dumping all the required feed at day 0. when it comes to trays one thing was clear one should never over feed, in such case the you end up with sludge of uneaten food left behind which is hard to separate the pre-pupa.
Here I also learned the limitaions of ramp system in self harvesting the larvas. As if the edges are not primerily designed with ramps, then adding some ramps is inefficent as depending of the texture and moisture level of end left over feed, the larva may neglect going out of the feed in pre-pupa form and pupate in the feed itself. Still there is scope of doing research of different methods of harvesting the pre-pupa out keeping the above observation in mind. [given it took 3hr to separate mixture of pre-pupa/pupa/larva from one tray]
Now when It comes to maiting and general activity of flies it has been observed that having too much air speed dose’nt supports stable mating pairs, and light intensity effects the general behaviour of BSFly. Well it is observed that places with light intensity of 9-12k LUX there was higher density of flies at that location, but one should also not forget the importance of cooler spots across the area as there was sights of flies resting in cooler away from light areas. There is also kind of requirement for the flies to be kept in dark places for there Pupation.
With that we are left with other general observations like presence of strong fermenting food and egg collection strips with sugar and ferment solution brushed on it, this works so well as most of the flies lay egg on this wood strips. And last but not least it takes around a month for completing life cycle of BSFly in Pune are in August month.
