Rearing Black Soldier Fly Larvae

BSF larvae were originally obtained from Bio.S Biogas (Grimma, Germany) in July 2018. Since then, the population has been genetically isolated (~30 generations) from others and reared continuously on chicken feed (GoldDott Eierglück, DERBY Spezialfutter, Muenster, Germany), which is frequently used as a high-quality diet [26 (link)]. The larvae were maintained in 19.5 × 16.5 × 9.5 cm (l × w × h) polypropylene boxes with 150 mg eggs (~6000 eggs) per box at 27 ± 1 °C and 65 ± 5% relative humidity in constant darkness [27 (link),28 (link),29 ]. Once ≥50% of the colony had reached the sixth instar, dark-colored prepupae were separated from the substrate using a vibratory sieve shaker (AS 200, Retsch, Haan, Germany). For pupation and subsequent metamorphosis, prepupae were transferred to mesh cages (Bioform, Nuremberg, Germany), each with a size of 60 × 60 × 90 cm (l × w × h), located in the greenhouse.