Last year while turning my compost i was attacked by yj bees and had my first moderate-severe allergic reaction to 5 stings. Man i was pretty scared, and that makes it worse, like getting bit by a venomous snake- stay calm?- not easy when your hands and feet feel like they are on FIRE as your tongue and throat start to swell. I broke my no pesticde rule and thru sevin in the hole. It killed them in 24 hrs..The nest was where my 4 little kids play and i needed to deal with the problem asap.. In the fall i dug all contaminated compost out and re-composted it in a tumbler. I now have some epinephrine handy. I also steer clear of yj, honey bees are so much nicer.

A bit before the bin... what are you composting? Just some kitchen scrap/household paper, balcony gardening, bigger yard or garden? I ask because you show worm bins, which are run mostly on kitchen scrap and household paper, sometimes some fallen leaves or grass clippings. But not for composting something like your old tomato plants or trimmings off your bushes sort of stuff. Worm composting bins often don't touch the ground, and they don't have to- the bottoms are sealed. That helps keep your worms in the bin instead of potentally running away out the bottom of the system. Some of them have the spigots on the bottom to drain off excess liquid that can happen with worm composting. You can make your own DIY worm composting bin setup rather than buy one if you like. If you are looking to compost yard scrap as well as the household stuff, you are better off using more traditional composting bins. They aren't meant for using worms to do the composting, though sometimes worms will show up in bins. They don't have to touch the ground, some folks like having tumbling composters. But many bins do touch the ground since it's handy to just have them on the ground instead of elevated. Some folks like to leave their bins or piles cold, but if you don't have a lot of space you will likely want to do hot composting since it turns faster and can take up less room over time. The small household auto-composters that have come onto the market recently are interesting. To my understanding they can work. But only if you are a low scrap producing house and/or you keep up hard on the running it to turn out the composting as much as you are making scrap. I haven't tried one myself, so can't vouch for how good or not they are.

Depends on your composting style and how quick you want finished product, and a bit on how you want to use your compost. And what you got to compost. You can go as small as a half gallon jar stuffed full of greens to make an extract to hot bins of a few feet in every direction that you turn on the regular. It sounds like you might not like cold composting since that is very slow by comparison to hot composting. Some people like to use tumblers for kitchen scraps, or set up worm bins. There is a bunch of folks over in the composting area that are all great at it. Many have different styles.

If you plan on adding a lot to it prior to harvesting the contents, there's no harm in having a large bin from the beginning. Before I discovered a municipal leaf, grass, pumpkin dump that allows me to take what other people bring, I only added stuff to my bin that I needed to dispose of---yard waste, food waste. It never heated up. I read once---I don't know if it's true, but I accepted it as gospel---that cold compost makes a product with better disease suppression than hot. My mother made more compost than almost anyone I know. She had no clue what she was doing, had no intention of harvesting anything, and she didn't garden. What she did was send two young children out to the "mulch pile" several times a day with bowls of peelings or the output of yard chores. All anyone really needs to do is walk a path to their bin, and dump anything that will decompose---without harming the environment or the sensibilites of those who may pass---and walk away. You don't even need to harvest it if you don't feel like it. Just think of it as a way to manage your household waste. Regarding the size of your compost set up, I'd like to imagine that having six bins lined up along the roadside gains me the respect of all who pass. I'd like to imagine that, but I've heard differently.