Meet the insect
Hermetia illucens — the quiet workhorse of the farm.
The Black Soldier Fly is harmless to people and livestock. Its larvae are among the fastest organic-waste recyclers on the planet — and the reason HERMETIA ILLUCENS SDN. BHD exists.
- Scientific name
- Hermetia illucens
- Larval stage
- 12–18 days
- Daily intake
- ~2× body weight
- Adult lifespan
- 5–8 days
Not a pest
Adult Black Soldier Flies do not bite, sting, or transmit disease. They have no functional mouthparts — they live only to mate and lay eggs.
Voracious larvae
BSF larvae eat almost any organic matter — kitchen scraps, fruit pulp, spent grain, manure — converting it into protein and fat in days, not weeks.
Self-harvesting
When ready to pupate, mature larvae instinctively crawl out of the feed and into a collection channel. No sieving, no sorting.
The lifecycle
From egg to fly in about six weeks.
Five stages, one closed loop. We harvest at the prepupa stage and rear the rest into adult flies, so the cycle keeps producing the next generation on its own.
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~4 days
01
Egg
Females lay clusters of 500–900 tiny cream-coloured eggs in dry crevices near a food source. They hatch within four days.
-
12–18 days
02
Larva
The hungry stage. Larvae feed continuously, growing from 1 mm to about 25 mm and gaining most of their lifetime weight in this phase.
-
~7 days
03
Prepupa
The larva stops eating, darkens, and self-migrates out of the feed bed. This is the harvest window — what we collect for feed and meal.
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~14 days
04
Pupa
The prepupa anchors itself in a dry, dark place and forms a hardened shell. Inside, it transforms into the adult fly.
-
5–8 days
05
Adult fly
Adults emerge, mate within days, and the females lay the next generation of eggs — closing the loop and starting the cycle again.
↻ Loops back to stage 01
See the larvae at work.
Walk through how we feed, harvest, and turn the cycle into fertilizer, feed, and farm-grown protein.