Monte, from the FAQ: "Green fruit beetles are, for the most part, good guys. They prefer to feed on decomposing organic material as grubs and overripe or rotting fruit as adults. If you have them in the compost pile they are working hard to break it down for you along with the redworms and other members of your "microherd". "You can identify them from other more destructive types of grubs fairly easily. They are an off white color changing to a dark grey at the tail end with a reddish brown head. They are considerably larger than most grubs, up to 2" in some cases. Say the size of a small shrimp. If you expose them they will crawl on their backs, legs in the air, to try and rebury themselves. This "upside down" mode of locomotion is specific to this species." That's pretty specific. So - is that what you have, you think? It says nothing about eating roots. The first time these grubs found their way into my compost pile, from horse manure I think, they chewed through it, making the best finished compost - as fine-textured as vermicompost.

I've read posts that claim these CREATURES are a valuable part of the decomposing process.HORSETWACKLE! Since I think they are the grubs of Japanese Beetles, I kill them with great glee. If you have a lot, can you spread the compost out on a tarp or cement slab in full sun? They will either bake or be eaten by birds. Lloyd ... to this day our family calls cooked brown rice "maggots". A name coined by my sons. But you should have responded to his suggestion with "no, dipped in chocolate, of course"

See what I mean about conflicting reports on how beneficial these can be? My compost pile has definitely been untended. I saw the grubs when I first turned it after a winter of leaving it alone. Here a post saying that the grubs are beneficial: http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/soil/2002013027009234.html Here's another one on the exact same grub, saying that they can be very destructive to your lawn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fruit_beetle And Soldier fly larva are pretty much acclaimed for being helpful, so we should be careful lumping everything into a single category. http://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/story.php?S_No=802&storyType=garde I was hoping for a solid ID on what kind of grubs I had in my compost, but my pictures may be too fuzzy for anyone to tell for sure. Here is a link that might be useful: Soldier Fly Larvae

It sounds like they're probably maggots - the larval form of flies. If they're housefly maggots ... well, almost everyone dislikes houseflies, so you probably don't want to breed them. If they're black soldier flies (BSF) - well, there are differences of opinion about those here. BSF are powerful digesters of protein, and can reduce a lot of input to a little output fast. Some figure, hey, that's what composting is supposed to BE - various micro and macro digesters gobbling up the edible bits of kitchen and garden waste, and leaving behind organic material suitable for enhancing garden soil. Others point out that it is possible to prevent maggots in compost, and claim that their presence is proof that you've done something wrong. (I figure, IF you're trying to prevent having maggots and you have 'em, you've done something wrong. But if you are pleased by the BSF's digesting the material they digest, and not trying to prevent them, then you haven't done anything wrong.) Should you want to exclude black soldier flies from your composting? Maybe. BSFs don't pester people in the way that houseflies do, so allowing them in your compost isn't going to cause problems for neighbors, etc. But - they do eat all your good compostable stuff and then fly away ... that is, instead of just converting compostables into stable compost (like fungi and bacteria do), they're partly converting it into black soldier flies, and when they fly off, all of the organic material they've incorporated into their bodies disappears with them. I think that's one part of why it seems like they can manage to reduce a pile so very dramatically (though many digesters do that, it sometimes seems the most dramatic with BSF maggots). So if your goal is as much compost as possible, you might want to avoid BSFs. If your goal is not sending lots of waste to a landfill, and you're looking for the easiest way to get it all decomposed, BSFs might be fine for you. So - flies tend to be attracted to wet glop near the surface of compost. If you want to NOT have 'em, put dry stuff on top of your wet stuff. Getting rid of them after they're there is harder, but if you just make the pile not-attractive for flies laying eggs, the ones already there will become flies and fly away, and then you'll have a maggot-free pile again.