no. bedding i believe helps just to aerate the bin and also provides food as well as recycling materials. i have seen many people using cow/chicken manure in their worm bins alone on youtube they have no problems. of course it is already composted manure so it doesn't heat up and kill your worms. but they will eat the manure and thrive in it just as good. ontop of that worms can dig tunnels which is the main reason their is no turning involved the worms should be aerating your bin for you with air holes as well. all i do suggest is you don't compact down the manure and pile it high as gravity will compact the stuff at the bottom making it prone to stink also depending on what worms you use majority of composting worms if not all stay at the top portion building a deep bin is wasteful. build a shallow bin and simply top it off when they finish up. like i said i know many people just on youtube who use manure both as bedding and as food their piles are doing just as good. i am not sure if they still feed them food scraps but i assume it is possible i do know the worms will eat the manure though/thrive on it alone.

If it gets hot in the summer where you are, I wouldn't want to sleep under a wool blanket. That'd be even hotter. And even though the blankets are advertised as washable, I think the manufacturers are thinking that they'd get washed 3-4 times a year, not weekly. So I'm not sure how well they'd stand up to weekly washing and drying. You could try a thin cotton blanket inside the duvet cover. You could encase the blanket if you wanted to avoid washing it every week. You could easily just safety pin it to the corners of the cover if it shifts around too much. But some cotton blankets are very loosely woven, and again, I'd worry about washing them weekly. So I'd get one with a fairly tight weave that wouldn't stretch out too much. How much it will shift around has a lot to do with how "slippery" the duvet cover fabric is, and how "slippery" the fabric of the blanket is. A sateen weave is going to be a lot more slippery than regular woven fabric, for example. There are a lot of nice-looking cotton blankets that could easily work as both blanket and bedspread. A top sheet and cotton blanket might be the best combo for you. Or try just a flat top sheet under the duvet cover. That would give you three layers of fabric over you--and the air between the layers would help to trap your body heat to keep you warm enough. And if you get too hot, you can take the duvet cover off the bed and just use the top sheet. Quilts are lovely, but again, I don't think most of them are designed to hold up to weekly hot water washing. I have pretty much the same allergy problems, and in the summer, I have a top sheet and cotton blanket on the bed, and use an old embroidered linen tablecloth as a bedspread. They can all be easily machine washed and dried weekly.

We see two main kinds of boxes anymore. Wood foundations. These have almost no give and work fine but can get noisy if the exact right wood, nails and a good frame are not used. Semi Flex steel boxes. These have an oh so tiny amount of give and are less prone to making noise. I find them usually more difficult for jumping kids to outright break as well. Usually the feel difference is minimal...maybe I am not perceptive. Maybe your old boxes are going bad (thing soft in one or all spots). I would be curious if you pull the mattress off how much give your boxes have. Regardless though, as long as you are sleeping well it matters not a lot.

I don't know what happened in your case but I have kept night crawlers in the same kind of bedding all summer many times. The bedding needs to be kept moist (not wet) and cool. Also don't over crowd it. I keep mine in an old refrigerator. I think most worm bedding is made partially from ground up newspaper with probably other things added. I always spread mine on my garden when I'm done with it.