Hey,hi Linda & kathi, Kathi,yes, i love my worm bin.i have had mine for about a year now,i will never be with out it.How long have you had yours? Linda,ha ha ha,you should have a worm bin,every one should. I bought mine from The Worm Factory,you have to order the worms seperate,and they olny ship when it warms up a bit. Mechele just bought one,she can tell you when they will ship the worms.I absoultly love it,i throw all my kitchen scrapes in it,and get the reward of good black gold,and worm tea. The two big worms at the beggining are Cocoa & Sammie,you won't find cutier worms any where. Carol

I put a gallon milk jug of water in the middle of the bin with an aquarium heater in the water. I cover the whole thing with a black sheet and keep it in my unheated greenhouse. The worms are not as active as in the summer, but they have survived, especially next to the warm water. The food definitely does not decompose as fast. One day, after of a week of days with highs in the 20's, there was a frozen chunk in the side of the bin, but the worms appeared to have moved out of it. If no electricity, try moving the box in the sun. Cover with a "comforter" made of a black trash bag filled with styrofoam peanuts. Use binder clips to keep it from blowing off. Make sure the worms are still getting air. I think worms at school is potentially a great idea, but I haven't worked out the details yet for my school. My bins get fruit flies too easily to keep inside. And I worry about kids with mold allergies.

The bin is nice enough for inside. Can it live inside for 8 weeks? That just might get the bin over most of the heat. Perhaps it would be a good time to harvest and start with new bedding at the same time. Consider a micro bin inside in case of overheat of your main bin. For shade I am thinking bamboo poles making half of a tee-pee that is structural so you can just move it aside to work on... play with the bin. Or perhaps something that looks like an old fashioned child's doll house that can be moved aside and is hollow inside. You do not want the sun to touch the sides of the bin. You do not want the sun to heat up the side of the building or walking bricks. The picture helps us greatly. In the summer will the sun's path cross the walking path left to right with both buildings providing some shade? or shoot straight down the middle of the path all day? Where is South and are you above the equator? Can you put a hollow brick into the ditch right next to the house and move the bin over on to the bricks? This might provide a tiny bit more of shade which may make a difference. There seems to be a window above the bin. Can the air conditioner drip onto the bin or cover? This walkway may be a fire isle. Can you move the shelf on the right along the path and put a few stepping stones across where the shelf was across from the bin? It is great to see people taking what they have available to them even if it is not ideal and turning it into something beautiful that was not there before and would not be available for others to see if it was not for the gardener making the world a better place.

Igore -- Since your upper trays are merely damp, gravity is probably responsible for the wet collection tray. Your worms are just exploring and get stuck down in the basement. If you use the Search feature on this forum, you will find that a lot of us with COWs and WFs fill the bottom collection tray with shredded paper or cardboard. In order for the worms to climb back to the working tray, there needs to be contact between the two trays. You can place weed cloth, or any tightly woven cloth over the shreds to act as a safety net. I use a remnant of a curtain sheer overlapping the edges, but a t-shirt or dish towel would work as well. The worms will fall through, look around, and then climb back up. The cloth just needs to be porous, and tightly woven. I once tried plastic window screening, but the worms still wriggled through and I had to pick them out of the bottom cardboard shreds.