Thanks to any who responded regarding the fly issue I was having. I am happy to report that the combo of regulating the conditions in my bin and going in armed with the shop vac has solved my fly problem.

I am not squimish, but the fly issue was out of control. We are talking a black funnel cloud when I open the lid to the box. As I stated my boyfriend had the bigger issue. And the fly strips were a tacky solution (no pun intended).Also explainging the situation and the why to all of my family over the holidays was difficult. They already think I am "odd" at times, this only helped to cement the opinion. "You have what in the basement?" or "You really have a box full of worms and rotting food INSIDE the house?". I am sure many here have had to do the same explainging a time or two.

Thanks Chuckieboo for the Shop Vac tip. That was the ultimate solution. I just shut the door to the room the bin is in, crack the lid, stick in the shop vac, suck most of them up, remove the lid and suck up any straglers. You can suck the little buggers right out of the sky if you are quick. It is handy that we have one of the smaller shop vacs, this makes it more manageable.

Also thanks to everyone else here that gives information so freely. I now have a succesful worm bin that is ready to harvest and I learned it all here. I didn't buy a single book, just information I got here coupled with a few internet searches. It took a little while to get it all rolling, and rightly, ran into a couple stumbling blocks along the way, but the next round should be much smoother. Next time I am going to start two bins, since I realized that our rabbit produces enough for two bins. I plan to rotate them under the hutch, one week on, one week off, with feeding from the kitchen in between. Shoudl work better, but we will see.

Thanks again

Kat