Winter hardy bugs to raise (BSF larvae withdrawals!)

After having a lot of fun with black soldier fly larvae this past year only for them to disappear in fall as soon as the weather cooled down, I'm hoping there are other bugs to raise for my chickens and future pigs (and eventually tilapia and bluegill if my aquaponics plans ever materialize).

The limitations I'm facing besides climate (winter lows are usually around 10 degrees F here) are the wife's firm resistance to bringing any of the bugs inside the house.

I'm willing to try greenhousing if it's not to pricy to put in place, but I'm wondering if anyone here has had success maintaining a bug/protein source for livestock through winter. Preserving summer harvests would also suit my goals if anyone has experience there.

Have you considered a worm farm for disposing of kitchen scraps and harvesting the worms for your chickens?

Man, in my experience you really need some form of warmth even if it is the passive room warmth of a house. I would say your best chance of having something to survive the winter in a passive greenhouse I would risk giving mealworms a try. Chickens would probably enjoy all the different life stages as a snack. Extras you might consider selling to reptile keepers on the side.

If your wife is suddenly less squeamish, you could give dubia roaches a try, but they require a heat source. The beauty of it is if you somehow had a few get loose, they would not survive outside of their enclosure.

I've overwintered red wrigglers in an old fridge converted into a sub irrigated worm bin.
I think you could keep most bugs active and alive in such a contraption if you add an aquarium heater and maybe an aquarium pump.
Place this outside and it could contain both the smells and the bugs.
The aquarium heaters self regulate temperatures, so the energy cost could be minor.
The food scraps themselves will be adding some heat as they break down.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

Megan - I have a bathtub a friend of mine gave for just such a project. I just don't know if it offers enough shelter/insulation to keep a worm population going through the worst of winter. That and my local worms aren't all that prolific. More of an occasional snack than a regular source of feed for the flock.

Timothy - dubia roaches sound intriguing. I have a spot outside near the rear chimney/garbage burner that would be relatively easy to insulate and get heat to. But if mealworms are more cold tolerant that might be the winner.

William - might try burying my little bathtub. Never considered an aquarium heater before. They effective outside of water?

If only I could figure out how to get the cockroaches in the house pipelined to the chickens.

Oh no, I wouldn't use them outside of water.
My worm bin wicked water up from a bottom reservoir.
A reservoir of water helps stabilize temperatures and maintain moisture.
Heating it with an immersion heater is an extra step I haven't tried, my worm bin stayed frost free just from the biological activity and the insulation.
The worms were not very active but they were safe and sound.

We do use an aquarium heater in a vacuum insulated dog bowl, to keep water unfrozen for the chickens.


It occures to me that even an open topped bin could work.
Every winter I pile leaves and food scraps into a ~20'x4' run.'
I pile, my chickens shred and spread the pile, and I pile it up again.
When I dig deep, the compost is soft and full of worms.
The chickens feast, but I'm only digging up one side at a time, so half the worms are entirely untouched.

Do your chickens have a coop / house that would stay warm enough for such a project?  I imagine space would be limited, but if the heat of the chickens (a yield) keeps their live feed above freezing (a need) then it's win-win.  It also would be close to the ladies for food distribution, but once they know it's there, you may need to keep it well defended.

There are other small heaters like carboy heaters or seedling heat mats, but I'd put money on them being for inside use only though.  That said, if you have a shed or garage, that could be an option.  On the bigger side would be the heaters used for stock tanks so the animals have access to water - they are typically either immersion or on a floating platform from what I've seen.

There's reptile heat lamps as well.  If you want to go higher tech, there's controllers available that act as a thermostat to turn one a load - that's what Ringer Jennifer B and Boot Ben were working on setting up for the pump house at Wheaton Labs to keep it from freezing.  The idea was to point an incandescent light at a rock so it could act as a miniature version of a rocket mass heater without the rockety bits.

Good luck.

If you have a cubic meter enclosure full of bedding, and if you feed them & keep them moist enough, worms should do fine in your area through the winter. I don't have a ton of experience (yet), but we are counting on that for our worm septic system. We are in zone 6, and worm septic systems like ours have been successful in colder temps. Our design was prototyped in Massachusetts and thrived for at least 20 years; not sure if it is still going.

Here's an article discussing worm farming in the winter; it is what we are banking on!

Happy Worms All Winter Long!

Sam Shade wrote:(winter lows are usually around 10 degrees F here)
I'm willing to try greenhousing if it's not to pricy to put in place

I just finished reading Mike Oehler's Earth Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book and thoroughly recommend it.
It's quite a fun and fascinating read, plus I really enjoy Mike's style of writing.
In it, he teaches a method of building which can be not only cheap to install, but free to operate year-round by using gravity and the natural warmth of the earth combined with storing thermal inertia from the sun.

If you could find stout trees to harvest and/or free lumber to use, along with something like used sliding glass doors for glazing, it could even be free to build.

William Bronson wrote:Oh no, I wouldn't use [aquarium heaters] outside of water.
[...]
We do use an aquarium heater in a vacuum insulated dog bowl, to keep water unfrozen for the chickens.

Another option might be a chicken water deicer. I was able to keep my birds' water unfrozen when it was 10F outside:


63F water a few minutes later:



I also think that a seedling heat mat might be able to achieve something similar, and some of the fancier ones even have a probe thermometer which could be put inside the bug container.
Bury it, or combine it with some form of insulation (like straw or hay, maybe akin to a Haybox Cooker) and you've likely got a really nice space for some bugs or worms.
Heck, I think I might have to give this a try now...

I second the suggestion of seed starting mats.  They come in different sizes, you can get a thermostat.  The probe goes in the substrate, and the thermostat turns the mat on and off as needed.  The mats are ok if moisture gets on them.

I always put insulation under the mat so I wasn’t heating the table.  And I needed a cover over the moist substrate to keep the whole thing from drying out.