You should set up your bin at least a week before the worms arrive. Mix in a little food, don't get carried away a cup is enough. You need to get your micro heard growing so there is something for the worms to eat when they arrive. If there is food in the bin the worms are more likely to stay inside. You can mix the food into the bedding before the worms are added without any problems.

Having a larger number of trays will enable you to have easier harvests. If you can wait long enough to allow the compost to finish up (that's the hard part). If you do wait there should be fewer worms in the bottom tray when you do harvest. You will be able to allow the bottom trays to process to finer vermicompost.

When the worms migrate to the upper level they don't all go in mass. A large amount stays behind for a long time eating the food that is too small for us to see. In some WF they never all go up. In any case the lower trays will have a lot of eggs in them. You will be able to wait until they hatch out and move up before harvesting. The more trays you have the more eggs are able to hatch out and the faster you population will grow.

When your worm population gets larger they will take up more trays. That is you will have the working tray. More than one tray with half finished compost in it. One tray with hatching eggs and another that is finished. Or that is how it is supposed to go.

I cant help with the outside critters. Perhaps someone else can.

Welcome, fagopher.

The question about having too many tiers depends on how many worms you start with and the amount of kitchen scraps you are trying to process. We're a family of two and eat a lot of veggies. I began with the 3-tier GWF last June and about 2,750 worms. Also placed it in a covered area outside. By October my freezer was half-filled with bags labelled "Worm Food." I started thinking about ordering more trays. But then came the winter and the worms became less active.

After my third harvest I was down to two working trays. However, in order to provide better ventilation (I was having a lot of problems with mites), I filled the topmost tray with only shredded newspaper.

It is definitely Spring here. Yesterday I noticed a huge number of active, young worms in the middle/working tray, so added more bedding and food to the top/third tray.

Listen to fosteem1 about setting up the bin before the worms arrive. The food needs to decompose. Some compost would also contain the micro-critters the worms love.

A well-run bin shouldn't smell bad (don't add broccoli or cabbage at the beginning) so the marauders might not find it. Do they go after your garbage can?

Thanks you for your input. I had it prepared now.. so i guess all I need to do is wait for the worms to arrive :)

No, the marauders don't go after the garbage cans... In fact I (and most of mi neighbors) don't let the can out overnight. I guess that is good.

I have seen many references to frozen food.. is it to store it only or it has decomposing purposes?

Thanks

It is just for the purpose of storing the food until it is needed.

Freezing the food helps break down to food into an easier to eat form. And freezing also kills any fruit fly eggs that happen to get deposited in the food.

That should have read..

Freezing the food helps to break down the food into an easier to eat form.

Dyslexia strikes again.

Sorry, fosteem1... I forgot to mention that! Thanks for taking up my slack!

Oh, I've been cixelsyD most of my life! And, I now have the CRS disease (Can't Remember Squat)!! LOL!!

Robert