I would put in some more friendly bedding. I put in some organic home made compost with the news paper and card baord. THey really like old wet cardbaord. having some soil in there helps. Where they came from probably had compost, soil or at least worm castings all over, so the new moist news print might seem like a foriegn place to them. you could put soil or compost in just half of your worm bin and see if they like it. Egg shells crushed up very fine and boil some leaves and put them in there too. News paper or any thing natural is hard to break down with out any soil in it or with out much worm castings in there. Once the soil is mixed in with paper, cardbaord or leaves ist will start to break down and end up as food stuff for the creatures in the bin and the worms too. The creatures are bacteria and stuff we cannot see. Newly wet news print is not food instantly, it is only a place to hide for now. BUt in time it will break down and get slimey or decompose and become food. Good luck BIll C

Thank you for the ideas! I didn't have the spigot open but went ahead and opened it. Will be more mindful of air flow. Like I said, they seem to be doing their job and there is no bad smell otherwise. when i checked just now when i went to open the spigot there were no worms down below. You are right, a little more info would have been helpful :) I opted for the $79 version of the worm factory rather than the "new and improved" worm factory 360 that costs around 120 - seems like the biggest difference is the "worm ladder" on the WF360 which supposedly is to help the worms who get stuck down below (selling point?), as well as a different lid that allows you to stack trays on, and a tool kit. well i had the tools laying around, and a shallow plastic tub from the dollar store works just fine to set the trays on :) so far i am really enjoying my worm bin... it really is very cool... has anyone else had this problem?

I have an indoor bin, so I avoid anything that "putrifies." So, I avoid all meats/oils/fats. I also avoid highly acidic foods. pH is somewhat critical to the worm survival. I also avoid onions and garlic. I really do not know why. I read it once on the boards a while ago and I just don't do it. I also avoid anything with mold, no matter its original composition. Egg shells I keep to a minimum. Since they actually do not digest these (grit), I grind them up and sprinkle over. As others have mentioned, rice/grains/grass.....anything that has the tendency to heat up the bin. Banana peal ends. I noticed that my worms avoid these. They eat all of the banana peals and leave the ends. I pulled out upward of 12 ends from my bin before I realized they weren't eating them. I also add non-edible items. I cover each tray with newspaper. Once it gets a bit holey, I mix it in and lay another on top. Every once in a while, I will put in a cardboard egg carton. Of course, these are my experiences and preferences. I imagine everyone has their own way of caring for their worms.

Dwalt, When you add the second tray all the worms don't migrate in mass. In fact you are lucky if they move at all for a while. And then it only seems to be the adventurous ones or some of the big ones. All the little worms stay behind. The baby's seem to stay put not crawling more than a inch or so from their hatching place until they are around an inch long. When i was harvesting my stacking bins the bottom bin seemed to have just as many worms by volume as the top bin. Only the worms were all under an inch and a half long. Most of them were under an inch, all hatchlings from egg cases left behind by the older worms. Picking all those baby's out is what finally convinced me to go with a flow through. I sound like a flow through expert. I am not I'm a newbie at it. Only just having set it up. I was harvesting early because stacking Rubbermaid type bins put a lot of weight on the bottom bin squishing the compost out the bottom holes. Not a problem with the worm factory or cows. They have little stops that keep it from happening. After i started the flow through up i came accost a blog that told of a wormer that drilled holes large enough to insert corks into the bottom of the bins that is supposed to work like the stops on the WF and COWS. Ah well.