"and left over feed" "But, I dug a little deeper this afternoon. I found some white grubs in the bedding. No idea how they got there. What does this mean? Are grubs bad for my worms?" Is there warmth being generated in the bin? Do not add food. Do not add water. Do not pass go. ummm skip the last one. Add two grocery bags of very dry shredded bedding such as coffee trays, egg cartons, dry peat, dry coir, or even water absorbing crystals and call me in the morning. I think the worms are escaping heat, and other things created by the rapid decomposition of the food waste by BSFL aka Black Soldier Fly Larvae. But do not worry. Your bin is in the hands of experts. BSFL are great at quickly turning kitchen scraps into the perfect feed for compost worms. When the BSFL have finished their job and the food is ready the worms should go back down. A lot of moisture is produced because the BSFL reduce the volume of waste 90% releasing all the water in the produce.

Just wanted to shout: "Eureka, they live and multiply"!!!! This, of course due to the many awesome tips, tricks and all that knowledge that lives in these pages of threads on this forum; all dispensed freely, mostly empirically tested and I am so grateful for it. I'm the proud owner of now 2 bins chock full of happy, sassy worms and will be adding a third bin tomorrow night, too lazy to do it now, lol. Hummersteve, I mostly followed the directions that came with the factory but added much more shredded paper and cardboard, a really cushy, deep layer. I save the mush from juicing, all eggshells, all other veggie scraps minus onions and garlic as well as most fruit scraps in a bin in the fridge and blend it with a little water when it looks like they need more food. I also grab a good handful of good dirt from my outdoor compost and add once a week or so in addition to misting every third day, so far so good. The worms live in my kitchen, no odor, no other (undesirable) bugs that I've noticed. Equinox, yes I do read the Sunday paper, now I have co-workers bringing me theirs on Mondays, so lots of nice bedding for the worm's pleasure for free and plenty of food, too. Yeah, I paid $ for the setup but it was worth it as it takes up little space, no mess, no fuss and it is a great conversation starter, too and I get to sort people out in the process...the squeamish either are too horrified to want to know me better or they embrace the experience and widen their horizons just a little, lol. I'll take some photos this weekend to show the progress thus far and again, thank you to all here and especially all of you who took the time to respond!

OK...I thought I was over the killing my worms stage, but I just lost my worms because of too much moisture. The worms were climbing out the sides of my stackable compost system and ended up dying because of the high temperatures during that week. When I drained out the tea, there was about 20 oz of liquid from the spigot. It was my fault, because I neglected to check the system during a week of high temperatures and I think more moisture developed from the rotting food than I normally expect during my weekly check ups. I was wondering, if I just left the system alone, whether the cacoons that were already there would still hatch. It has been a week since I discovered the carnage. I loosened up the entire system by tossing each tray and have not added any new food. I did notice some mold, but there has not been any flies or other things crawling around in the compost. This is worrisome because the first time I killed my worms when I was just starting out over a year ago, there were a few worms left. The remaining worms came back like a champ and I had what looked like thousands of them in my 3 bins. I am grateful for any advice or help.

It's great that you are teaching the kids with worms! Worms are awesome, and I definitely thought so when I was a kid, and even more so now that I am a somewhat older kid. As the worm bin is very, very new, don't rush things at first. It helps a lot that you had well-composted material, with worms already in it, to start. If you got a good number of worms at the start (at least 1000 or even more) that helps too. Nevertheless, it takes time for a worm bin system to ramp up to full processing capability. The #1 piece of advice for every new worm bin is to GO SLOW - don't add too much food at first. Wait. The worms will not starve - it's not like a cage of hamsters where they eat the food you gave them yesterday and need more food today. You could stop feeding for weeks and the worms would be fine. Maybe make an experiment out of it for the kids - have them observe how fast the food breaks down, how fast different kinds of food break down, etc - and a good lesson in patience! I would be pro-active on the assumption that there WILL be flies in the bin sooner or later; either fungus gnats, or fruit flies, or both. It's going to be very difficult to avoid. I managed to break the life cycle of a very large fungus gnat invasion in my Worm Factory by putting mosquito netting tightly over the whole thing. You may want to have this at the ready, or just start covering the bin right now. Those little flies, although not harmful, are annoying and a very, very bad ambassador for worm composting, and may lead to the untimely eviction of your worm bin by other parties. My main piece of Worm Factory advice is that I found it works much, much better if you have something inside each tray to prop it up and keep the trays from pressing down on the contents of the trays below. This allows more air and worm circulation and I got much better processed vermicompost as a result. I described the jars I use in my posts above, in this topic. Anything non-degradable that is about 3 inches high will work for this. You won't need it yet since you only have one tray going. The instructions on the Worm Factory say that the worms can't climb up from one tray into another unless the bottom of the tray is contacting the material in the tray below. This is completely untrue. The worms climb up and down with no problem even when there is this small airspace between the trays.