Food For Those Insects !!!

I was at the BH with the insect Barn today and manage to take a good look at the method to prepare the insect food.

They seem to be quite an interesting preparation.

The supervisor in charged indicated that he normally prepare the insect food every 10 days.

First he need to make sure that one of the four rooms is no longer producing those insect once they finish  gobbling up the food.  They will normally be harvested or move into the BH roving room or moved to the next room using a kind of bright light technique.

Once the room are empty or with little number of insect, the supervisor with open the entrance door and start his cleaning operation on the 9th day.

Once cleaned the trays where those insect food are kept are cleaned and dried they will be ready for the next batch.

The method of preparation is simple but need some exposure on the various steps.

First is to boil those plain water, about 100 liters, using normal LPG gas burner.

The water must be boiling hot.

Then he laid another container just beside the boiling water pot.

He will scoop about half a liter of hot boiling water and rinse the new container.

Once rinse and cleaned he will start his preparation by getting the powders, two types, and wet yellow me e ready.

There were also some minerals, two types and yeast beside him.

To begin the preparation he will scoop about 2 liters of the boiling water and poured into the empty but cleaned container.

First is to dissolved those minerals and yeast.  After that he will start pouring the two powders but the mee was the last to be added.

The mixture was stirred using a kind of rotating rod with a propeller at the end of the steel.  He was just using those drilling gadget as the rotator.

The mixing looks easy however the hot water and the mixture tends to splash up.  If the mixture hit your skin you will need to be taken to the hospital.  I suggest that he put on some protection glove and apron. 

Every few minutes he will add those hot boiling water into the mixture so that the mixture will not be too thick but not too thin.

The mixing took about 30-45 minutes and ho la it became a yellowish porridge, quite similar to corn porridge to me.

He will allow the mixture to cool down and he will move to the barn to make the last minute preparation.  What he did was to block some of those 6 inch diameter pipes to prevent any insect flying into the BH but only into this new unit.

Once that was done he will carry a bucket of the cooled mixture to be poured into those trays.  First the top and later move to the lower level.

He did indicated to me the thickness of the slug but I don't think I remember.

Once the work is done he will shut the door so that the cooling takes place and those life insects from the other three rooms will migrate into this room.

What a day and I am pleased with what I saw.

This is a must if you wanted your BH is to be quickly populated.