What do you feed your bluebottle/house flies?
- Thread starter Rick
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I'd been using honey for quite a while. But it's messy and expensive, so I thought I'd try a mixture of powdered sugar, powdered milk, and bee pollen. I've been using it for about a month now, and it seems to be working just fine... without all the stickiness and dripping on top of the cages. I just sprinkle a spoonful of the mixture in the bottom of the cages. I do mist my flies once a day like I do my mantids too.
I don't find the honey too messy. I do flies in 32 oz cups set up the same as for mantids. I use a syringe to put the honey on top of the foam plug. Works pretty good. So the flies can eat a dry mixture? I always figured they had to have a liquid.
PhilinYuma
Well-known member
Yep, they dissolve water soluble food with their own spit. A mixture of sugar and powdered milk/buttermilk works pretty well and is less sticky than honey.\
I figure they need water to live, just like other insects, and to make spit with... hence the misting every day. Works for me!
Emile.Wilson
Well-known member
Honey+ yens blend
ABbuggin
Well-known member
I have been using honey for a while now, but I like the sound of Kat's method.
PhilinYuma
Well-known member
Yes, indeed. As with all of my net cages, I have a paper towel substrate and a shallow Rubbermaid container full of peatmoss that I keep very wet. Flies are much more susceptible to dehydration than mantids. I also mist twice daily (its pretty dry here in the desert), and sometimes in my enthusiasm, will also spray the plastic door. The flies smirk knowingly.I figure they need water to live, just like other insects, and to make spit with... hence the misting every day. Works for me!
Another good thing to remember is that if you have more than 10Gm of pupae in a 12" cube, the flies will be competing for "roosting" space.
Flying burns a tremendous amount of energy and may also contribute to dehydration (I'll look that up when I get home and correct myself if I'm wrong,unless someone beats me to it!), so if you are keeping a lot of flies in one enclosure, give them some loosely clumped excelsior or raffia to rest on. And yes, I have run tests on ten flies per 32oz pot with and without excelsior. I have seen up to 100% loss over 3 days with no perching space and up to 100% survival with it.
For house fly, i use brown sugar mix honey water, the 'smell' from brown sugar attracts them well.
For blue bottle i smear a thin layer of honey on a small area on top of the net cage, then have a mist on it and put a light to attract the blue bottle for the feast.
For blue bottle i smear a thin layer of honey on a small area on top of the net cage, then have a mist on it and put a light to attract the blue bottle for the feast.
ismart
Well-known member
I use sugar water with ground up pollen.
I make my own mix like the others do, milk, sugar, bee pollen and lots of other stuff with calcium and brewers yeast.
Mantibama
Well-known member
For food I use fly food I order from mantisplace, for water I've been using Fluker's Cricket Quencher. It's a hydrated gel, works for both crickets and flies, and I really like it for preventing drowning!
