If the pile is reducing quickly after only four weeks then you must of gotten a good quantity of worms from your supplyer. Loved the pictures. Could use a bit of deburring. This appears to be the second post of people concerned about what looks to be worm castings. Or it could be springtails. Hard to tell. The bin looks great.

If the pile is reducing quickly after only four weeks then you must of gotten a good quantity of worms from your supplyer. Loved the pictures. Could use a bit of deburring. This appears to be the second post of people concerned about what looks to be worm castings. Or it could be springtails. Hard to tell. The bin looks great.

From everything ive read you should continue adding bedding along w the food waste. If ur going through that much that quickly maybe you should start another bin. Im in the process of getting my bin set up so i could be wrong. As far as the bugs i have no idea.

Conventional wisdom says that you should have about 6 inches of bedding. If the bedding is being consumed, then add more to bring the depth back up to 6 inches. Keep adding more each time you feed. If you know that the bedding at the bottom of the bin is being eaten, you can go a little deeper. If you know that the bedding at the bottom is not being eaten, then at some point, you will want to mix the whole thing to bring the bedding at the bottom up to the top. This only needs to be done once between harvests.

Thanks for the feedback! I've added some extra layers of bedding with some more kitchen waste. Everytime i turn some of the bedding/compost over to do a quick scan they seem pretty happy and active.

New question, i was adding some new scraps today and noticed about two dozen of these things. Anyone have any idea what they are? Good, bad?

BSFL Black Soilder Fly Larve. Lucky you. Now you have two creatures working to compost for you.

eascarlos, what's the blue stuff? Sorry if I missed it along the way.

Sweet!!! Thanks equinoxequinox! I'll take 'em, if they want to hang around.

@dowbright, no problem. Those are just nitrile gloves I use if i need to drop some stuff off in the bin before heading into work. Minimizes my clean up time.

Thanks again, everyone!

Thanks! I'm partially blind, and to me it just looked like a blue covering on your bin!!!! LOL What a hoot! Still grinning. :D

A couple of things to be aware of:
BSFL's eat a lot and attract females that will lay eggs there. Good if you want them, bad if you don't.
Worms like BSFL stuff - worm crack.
BSFL's will hatch in your bin.
BSF's fly faster than you can shut your mouth. Happened to a friend of mine.
He didn't expect anything but worms in his bin.
When wasp-looking things surprised him in mass he screamed, then spat.

Thankfully he shared the story with me. I laugh every time I think about it.

Rookie09 - lol! thats a great story. Fortunately, ee gave me the heads up, so when i returned from my travel i wasnt too surprised to see these black looking wasp/mud dauber like flies in my screen porch.
As always get alittle excited to seewhats going on with the bin after a week or so and once i got past the bsf, i noticed these fellows with some tiny spider? like bugs. Im not too worried about the spiders?, but should i care about these snail looking these. Forgive my use of all the technical jargon :)

Did this ever get identified ?

In looking at Questions, I'm seeing lots of stuff,
including a time when someone revived too many old threads.

Hmmm.

Site doesn't like my subject. I typed ID ?
Changing it to suit (as EQ might say ? ) HAL.

HAL =

(Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer)

Well the garden web god reminded me of HAL. And us all as Dave. Because we are.