11/21/2025
🪰The In’s and Out’s of Hatching Flies 🕷️
Let me know if this is helpful??? I can show more videos etc if it is helpful.
A necessity as a jumper parent and definitely a necessity in ad0ptions for my Banshee and Bahamas bloodlines 💯
So many — both girls and boys of my bloodline— do the magical switch to flies without ever having seen a single fly in their life. It’s just pre-installed in their DNA, I guess is my conclusion. Jumper instincts are wild. 😂
So here we go! Guidebook to hatching flies — from green bottles to house to blue bottles. I don’t hatch black soldiers, so that’s on you to learn another way!
Over the last 2 years, I have had the privilege of helping hundreds of jumper parents hatch flies successfully. When I came into the hobby over 3 years ago, it was a fraction of the size it is now, and I had to figure this all out on my own. Ugh, what a 6-month blur that was — so if I can make it easier for even one person, sharing this guidance is worth every word!
🪰 Key things to remember:
• Blue bottle spikes aren’t great for hatching after
5 weeks. Most won’t hatch or hatch with funky wings.
OK if you feed as spikes form a little longer.
• The fresher the spikes you take out of the fridge, the shorter the hatch cycle and the healthier the flies (with gut loading of course).
• Hatch time varies based on your state’s humidity, temperature, and your home’s personal climate chaos.
• Once they’re pupae (not wiggly little maggots), in optimal conditions with new–3 week old spikes, average is 10–15 days to fly.
• 3–5 weeks, more like day 20, and many won’t hatch.
• Best source for blue bottle spikes: Big Fat Phids. Affiliate c0de SO5.
• Green bottles are the smallest flies and hatch the fastest, and they arrive as casters (pupae), not spikes. As of sometime next week, I will be offering green bottle pupae!
• House flies are the “middle child” — medium size, medium hatch time.
• Please see my pinned post for step-by-step guidance. I’ve taken the liberty to add l1nk in comments 👇👇👇
• ALWAYS gut load all feeders before feeding to your jumper — organic honey, bee pollen, and reptile jelly pods are great options with flies.
• We DO NOT handicap flies. Ever. To transfer from your hatch container to the enclosure, give them a little fridge nap so they enter a twilight sleep. Escapee flies are chaos goblins and will ruin your peace.
• Never feed a jumper (even one you caught outside) any wild bug. Pesticides, parasites, DKS, mystery illness — it’s just not worth the risk
This is the grand tour of Fly Hatch University — where the dorms are plastic cups, the students buzz, and the graduation ceremony involves releasing a slightly confused blue bottle into a jumper enclosure.
Congratulations, you are now officially a Fly Rancher, Maggot Wrangler, and Pupae Life Coach.
Welcome to the club… we have honey, jelly pods, and jumpers who judge you from their hammock like tiny supervisors. 🕷️🪰😂
