Feeder Blue Bottle Fly LARVAE

Feeder blue bottle flies are sold on those page as LARVAE (we offer them as pupae/cocoons through a separate page/listing). We highly recommend these over pupae as you have more control with when they pupate and when you end up with flies. They help you to extend the shelf life of your order by choosing how long to keep the larvae in the fridge before they pupate. Read on…

Feeder blue bottle flies and even the larvae themselves are a staple for so many of our small pets and they are so easy to use, but buyer beware, they have a shelf life on the order of weeks to a month and some people struggle with them. Please read below and maybe even watch the video about how best to use them and extend their viability.

$7 for 100 lavae.

It’s okay to use the $16 No Live Guarantee 2 Day shipping option for this cheaper (living) product. But we cannot guarantee they will survive summer shipping and so you are taking your chances if you don’t order them with overnight, sorry. We do ship them with ice packs but these do little in a 2 day shipment, which is really 3 days in the box. Select a Hold for Pick Up Location during checkout if you live in a place with temps over 83 and want to improve your chances on a successful delivery with the cheaper shipping option.

If you don’t want to see them in their “larval” form click over to our other blue bottle fly product for pupae. You can place larvae, pupae and adult flies in the refrigerator to extend their lives but this only successfully works to dlow things down for so long. These larvae should be removed from the fridge after a couple of weeks. You can’t keep them in the fridge forever. When you want them to pupate (metamorphose into the pupa…the cocoon-like stage) for sure, leave them out of the fridge. Depending on their development progress, and temperature of the room, they will pupate within a few days generally, although it can take a couple weeks sometimes if they are in a particularly cold room. We do not recommend heat lamps or heat pads because they can easily cook inside a closed up container where heat builds up within in ways that users did not anticipate.

They may or may not arrive as larvae. They may pupate on the way to you, depending on level of development and temperature in transit.

Blue bottle larvae are themselves a great feeders for many things, including Jerusalem crickets, warrior beetles and other predatory ground beetles. Adult jumping spiders and mantises will often eat them in the larval form as well.

Most people will allow them to pupate on arrival and then wait for a week or so for them to hatch as adult flies. As the pupae develop they will go from a pale color to an orange and then to a dark red and finally to a dark maroon, almost black color.

The adult flies are very useful for a wide variety of predatory or scavenging pets. Ordering them as larvae helps to extend their viability/usable life. They then pupate and then hatch out as adult flies usually within about 5 to 7 days unless you place them in the refrigerator which will pause their development. In this way you can extend their usefulness for about 6 weeks. They do have a shelf life and leaving them in the fridge too long may cause them to fail to pupate.

Simple to use. If your pet eats worms/larvae, just add them to the enclosure. Or, follow the instructions on this page to induce pupation. After you have pupae (like cocoons) hatch them into adult flies in a separate container first (recommended). Warmer temps will cause them to hatch/emerge more quickly. It can take 5 days to 14 days, depending on temps. Once hatched, adults can also be stored in the fridge to prolong their lives. A bit of sponge dipped in sugar water will give them a little hydration and energy and help to extend their lives.

I repeated some of the care tips above because, frankly, people struggle with these for some reason. The video below may be helpful to explain or re-explain the points above, including factors of nuance like the temp of your fridge, etc.