I've heard that orange peels have chemical in them that's an irritant to worms. How much did you put in? I'd take them out. That may not be it, but why take the chance. Also, how hot is the system. If you recently fluffed everything, and the digestion of the food increased suddenly, it might have gotten hot. If it is, put in a container with ice to help out. You might also want to take the worms that are trying to escape out and put them in a smaller container with bedding. There's something wrong. Anyway, those are my thoughts on what to do. Was the horse manure pre-composted? I hear it gets really hot.

I cut up a whole orange and placed the whole thing in one corner of the bin. I have fed oranges before with good results. Last time the orange was frozen, and the worms went after it faster than I would have thought they should. This time the orange was not frozen. So far it is being ignored. Lesson learned--oranges always get frozen first.

I have not detected any heating.

I fed more manure last night, since the food is pretty much all gone, and kept a light on over the bin. The light is off now. I'll check on them a couple of times today and see how what they do.

citrus changes the ph of the bedding. Use very little if none.

Penny

As I have mentioned, I have fed orange sections in the past with no problems. The orange is all in one corner of the bin, so if that is what the worms did not like, they could just move away from it. Also, I had worms crawling (but not as badly as they are now) before I put the orange in the bin.

The orange is on one side of the bin, and I have covered the other side of the bin with about 1/2 inch of well aged horse manure. The worms are even crawling out of the manure which, so far, is their favorite food.

One other thing that may be a factor, the temps here are getting hot. Even inside my apartment it is around 85 F in the afternoon. Maybe my worms think that crawling around on the floor will be cooler than staying in the bin?

I'm putting a bottle of water which has been frozen in my bin about noon. This cools the bed during the hottest part of the day. I'm putting the bottle in a glass in a corner in case the plastic splits. Once a week I'll feed them and the food has been chopped and frozen which is their cooler for that day. The temp is reaching 100 degrees in my area. It is cooler on the patio about 90 but still hot. The bed seems to be cooler even on the hottest days but I had my worms make a run for it when I first got them and it is distressing to see their little dried up bodies.

I agree that oranges to one side shouldn't be a problem. They could just go elsewhere. Is your lid airtight or does it have lots of holes? Perhaps leaving it off and spraying the top regularly to aid evaporative cooling would help? You mentioned a lid and that you're keeping a light on the bin, so I'm not sure if you're already doing that. I hope things resolve themselves soon!!

I keep the lid loose. I have been taking it off a couple of times a day to encourage the worms to go back down into the bedding. I have been taking the lid off at night keeping a light on over the bin to prevent the worms from crawling.

I could try cooling the bin and see if that is the problem.

It's worth a try! Let us know what develops. I'm actually surprised that it's still a problem. Other than anaerobic conditions, my problems have resolved pretty quickly with intervention.

I'm grasping at straws here. Do you have a couple of inches of bedding on the top of everything? I may have occ heat problems that I don't know about, but they can hang out in the bedding and wait it out. Did you recently change types of paper (black and white to colored?), were the horses recently treated for intestinal worms?

Usually my problems resolve quickly too. I don't know what is happening here.

Another factor, maybe? The bin is pretty full of worms. Maybe some are looking for more space? I doubt that is the case, because the ones that run wind up in tight bunches. The bin, like most Rubbermade bins, has a ledge along the side. Most of the worms find that ledge and cuddle up there.

Anaerobic conditions? No. Except for the bottom 1/2 inch, the bin is breathing just fine.

I do not keep fresh bedding on top of the bin.

I have not changed paper types. In fact, now that I'm feeding horse manure, I'm using less paper. Could that be it? The worms started running about the same time I started feeding horse manure. Since the fibrous stuff in horse manure, that breaks down more slowly, becomes bedding, I have not been adding as much paper. Could this all be because of a change in the bedding from all paper and cardboard to paper, cardboard and manure? The worms love manure as food, but could the change in the bedding be the problem?

As for the horses being treated, I have no way of knowing. I put a small amount of manure in a cottage cheese container, put in a few worms, and let it sit for a few days. If the test worms survive, I assume the manure is safe to feed to the rest of the worms.

Has the manure been hot composted first? (Or at least sat in a pile for a long time?) I don't know anything about hot composting except reading that fresh horse manure gets really hot. I find that if the bedding is warm to the touch for me, it's too hot for my worms to be comfortable. They let me know by escaping.

The manure is picked up off of the ground along a horse trail. I have no way of knowing how long it has been there, but I suspect some of it is pretty fresh, since it wasn't there last time I walked along the same trail. I have not detected any heating. I never feed more than 1/2 of the bin with manure at one time, and usually not more than 1/3. Even when the worms are running, the manure is still crowded with worms. They go after the manure like no other food I have fed them, but they still run.

And what really puzzles me is that I started a second bin with worms from this bin. The new bin has shredded cardboard and paper as bedding. I have fed the new bin ground egg shells, ground rice and horse manure. There are no worms running out of the new bin.

It does sound like there is something in that bin the worms don't like. By picking up manure on the trail you are probably getting manure from several different horses and stables.

It could be anything from wormer to salt. Some horses just love salt, chewing great hunks off a salt block. Others chew wood, gnaw through heavy boards in no time. They been known to strip all the paint right off a wall along with a layer of wall.

BTW; Modern salt blocks aren't just salt anymore. They are full all kinds of vitamins and minerals. If you were to look at a vitamin and mineral sales catalog for humans you would find massive quantity's of everything in that catalog is added to a salt block.

There are also hard compressed food blocks sold for special purposes. With medicines in the blocks. If your local Pet Smart has a horse section check it out.

fosteem1, your guess is the best one so far. It is funny that the worms seem to love eating the manure, but it was at about the time I started using manure that the worms started running. I may have to back off on the manure for a while, but I don't have enough kitchen scraps to keep them fed.

If you don't have enough table scraps to keep your worms fed you should shred cardboard and add to your bins. The glue is an excellent food source. Also, you can sprinkle the top of the bin with either cornmeal or oats.

Can you go to your local grocer and ask them for any produce they are throwing out? Some stores allow this and some don't.
My chain of low-cost grocery stores freely give away produce to people with guinea pigs and rabbits etc. I got 4 large produce boxes one time, and that was chock full of stuff that I chopped, bagged and froze for my worms. I haven't needed to get any more since, since my hubby and I generate enough food for the lads ourselves.

leearnold: I use a lot of cardboard for bedding. The glue is a good food source, but cardboard is a high C source, and I still need N sources. Even if I feed manure, I still need additional N sources, since manure is the optimum C:N ratio, and I need more N to offset the cardboard. I already sprinkle ground rice and ground macaroni over the bin. (I got bugs in them, so the worms get them now).

jasdip: The grocer where I shop the most often will not give away produce. I asked. I will have to ask around at other places. Maybe I can ask a friend or two to save some scraps for me.

Well, things are getting worse. If I put the lid on the bin, the worms are trying to crawl over the side within an hour. I'm going to stop doing what I have been doing lately and go back to what I was doing before. I don't know the cause of the problem, but horse manure, citrus and ground rice will not be fed to the worms until they stop crawling. Then I may introduce them one at a time in small amounts and see if I can figure out which is causing the problem.

They sound very stressed sbryce. I would dump the bin, and start a fresh one. Hold off on the manure in the new bin, and see if they settle in and stay.

If you have Freecycle in your area (a community where people give away their old stuff instead of throwing it out) you can ask for some veggie scraps out of their gardens etc. Or just to save.
Last fall I posted that I wanted people's pumpkins after Hallowe'en. I had a blast driving around town one Sat, and picking up people's pumpkins.

They are acting very stressed, but at the same time they are reproducing like crazy, they are processing the food and bedding faster than ever, and they look and act very healthy.

I'm perplexed.

I think you mentioned that already took my advice to take the ones that were trying to get out and put them in another bin. I'd keep that up. Some species produce loads of cocoons/eggs/sperm/ etc. if they think they're dying. I don't know about worms. Seeing lots of cocoons may not mean they're doing well. Japan is trying to get rid of horrid HUGE jellyfish (>100lbs). They haul them up, kill them and then throw them back in the ocean. As they're dying, they release all of their eggs and sperm, so unwittingly Japan has made their problem worse.

If you've put worms in a different bin, how are they acting there? I know dogs are given deworming medicine monthly. It's for heart worm, but kills all worms. Since you don't know the source of the horse manure, I'd bet at least some of it had meds in it.

I have started a second bin, but I have not been moving worms into it since I started it. I may have to. I'm not seeing lots of cocoons. In fact, I'm not seeing any cocoons. What I am seeing is LOTS of baby worms.

The other bin is fine. It also has been fed with horse manure, but the worms are not running. There are also far fewer of them.

As for meds in the manure, I place some of the manure in a small container along with about 10 worms for a few days before I feed it to the worms. If I see any sign that the worms in the small container are dying (I haven't seen any sign of that yet) I won't feed that batch of manure. I have also not seen any sign of worms dying in the bin.

I was out for a few hours tonight. I kept the lid off of the bin and a light over it. The top layer of the bin is crowded with worms, as though they don't want to go deep into the bedding.

The temps here in my apartment during the day are over 90 F. I'm freezing a container of water to place in the bin in the morning. If that does not change anything, it may be time to start transferring worms to the other bin. I also noticed that the bedding is pretty dry compared to what it was when I was feeding primarily kitchen scraps.

There are a lot of factors. I need to figure out which one is causing the problem.

sbryce,
We get a lot of lettuce from a local sandwich shop and coffee grounds from a local coffee shop. Have you tried those kinds of places? As for the horse manure, there must be a stable near you. I'm sure that they would give you all that you want and then you could find out what meds the horses are given. It sounds more like a cooling issue to me though. If it has been 90 in your apartment, that is about the top end for these worms. The bedding will be slightly cooler, but I think that you should try to cool it down.

I checked the thermostat this AM. it read 85 F. I now have some ice in the bin. I'm going to see how the worms react to that. If they still try to crawl, I'll move them over to my other bin.

It has been 1/2 hour since I added the ice and covered the bin. I already have a bunch of worms crawling up the sides. It looks like they get a new home.

I put a jar full of ice in the bin this morning. The only worms trying to crawl out of the bedding this afternoon are crawling on the jar. Everything else looks normal.

It is looking like the problem was the heat. I'll keep my eyes on things for a few days to be sure.

It is looking like I have solved the problem of the worms running. After 24 hours of icing the bin, there are no worms crawling out. I left the lid on last night, and only had two worms trying to get out of the bin in the morning. The only problem now is that the ice only lasts a few hours, then needs to be replaced.

YEAH!! You probably already know this, but just in case.... Now you need to think about what's making the bin so hot so you won't have to use the ice. The big things are location and how much food you're adding at once. If you mix the food in with the entire compost, the whole thing can heat up and leave the worms with no place to go. I put the food one one side each time I feed them and rotate sides. Twice I have mixed things in and twice I have overheated the bin!

What is making the bin hot is easy. The temperature in my apartment right now is 85 F. It was over 90 F a couple of days ago. The question I have is at what temperature can I stop icing the bin?

I usually feed 1/3 of the bin at one time. If a food is questionable, I only put it on top of the bedding. always leave room for the worms to get away from something they may not like.

There we go! No mystery. The other quick way to cool things down is have a fan on a really low setting over the top of the bin and then keep the top really really wet. That's what they do in the ICU when patients get temps of 104 or so. (Air flow and a spray bottle.)

That might be easier than changing out bottles all the time. I don't know if it would use more or less electricity.

I've no idea at what temp you can stop icing the bin. Someone else surely will. I can say for certain that your worms will let you know if you stopped too early!

If the top dries out while you're gone, no harm done since the worms can just go down. It just won't lose heat as quickly. If you're out for a really long time and it's 90, perhaps you can do both. The center should stay cool long enough no matter how long you're gone during the day.

I'm putting ice in my bin at noon until about 5 PM. This is the hottest part of the day. The bedding seems to stay cool until night time when the over all temp drops outside. Mornings stay cool and starts heating up again about 10-11 AM. I'm thinking about putting a temp in the bedding to get a better feel for the actual temp. of the bed. One way to judge is how do you feel? I'm also using a plastic bottle frozen with ice placed inside a glass. The ice is solid and not ice cubes. The solid piece takes longer to thaw.

How do I feel? Sweltering day and night, but I don't want to turn on the evaporative cooler because it spews grit all over my desk.

I have two plastic jars that I have filled with water. One is in the bin. The other is in the freezer. Now that the bin itself has cooled down, I think the ice is melting slower.

And once the bin has cooled down it will remain cooler for hours even if you forget to put in another ice jar. Outside temps in my area are approaching 97 with 90 on the patio and this is June which should be about 80 during the day. I am starting to save 1/2 gal plastic milk jugs for hotter days this summer. I'll put them in a large bowl instead of a glass.

I have been laying ziplock bags full of ice on top of the compost.
My variation is i place a deep pile of shredded paper over the ice. It seems to keep the ice frozen longer. It is hitting 90 every day but the ice seems to keep frozen from early morning until i get home from work.

Does your lid have many holes in it? Mine does and they will stay in the bin because the light shines through the holes keeping them inside of it. I have holes on the sides of my bin and I cover the top holes with newspaper since most worms crawl out the side holes.

Some worms even if they have light will crawl out, that is why I keep my bin inside of a bigger one so the ones that do crawl out realize they made a mistake and will hide inside the bigger bin because the light is on.

If your ice bottles are melting too quickly, try wrapping them in newspaper. The ice will melt slower and the condensation on the outside will also cool the bin. A cold pack like Blue Ice will stay frozen even longer.

An alternative to leaving the lid off is to lay a piece of landscape cloth, or some other open weave fabric across the top. You can tape or clamp the edges if you think you might still have escapees.

I have a new theory now.

Since the worms stopped running, I went back to business as usual, plus the ice. The last few days I have had individuals run. They get a LONG way from the bin before they finally die! Last night I had another mass escape. I have fed with more manure, and tossed a couple of orange slices on the opposite corner.

I think they are running from the smell of decomposing oranges. It was rather strong this morning. I took the oranges out. We'll see what happens.

I'm still wondering if there's something undesirable with the bin they don't like sbryce. Did you try making a whole new bin, and dumping out this one and starting over? (Keeping the worms of course!)

I know mine tend to crawl more up the sides and lids when they're hungry. When I feed them, they stay down and pig out.

The bin is so thick with worms that trying to separate the worms from the bedding would be difficult. You may be right that they are hungry. I have considered that. I need to find a food source other than manure.

When I first put oranges in the bin, the worms just ignore them. When they are fully broken down, the worms go after them like candy. Somewhere in between, they might be the something in the bin that the worms don't like.

They say that if you're using cardboard as a bedding you don't have to add all that much extra stuff. Apparently the glue has protein in it. No nearby Starbucks? Maybe let the oranges degrade in some bedding before adding it to the bin. The bedding should keep it from getting too too gross.

As for separating the worms, if there's holes at the bottom of the bin, place the bin over another with aged food and bedding so that the bottom is in contact with the new bedding. If they don't like their current location, they'll be looking for a new place.

You probably already have holes, but if your bin doesn't have holes on the bottom (some suggest >50 holes at least 1/2" in diameter), then you might want to add them. I think the worms don't like the really mucky conditions you get at the bottom of a closed bin. Drill holes in a bin, dump the current stuff in that bin, add new bedding and food to your old one, place the new one on top and wait a few days. They'll separate themselves out for you. To make it go faster, put the whole thing in the sun. That will also help with drying if everything is mucky.

I think you mentioned that you have a 2nd bin. Put this one on top of that. If some of the worms stay in the current stuff, you know they're okay because they have an option.

I'm still worried about worm medicine in the manure. I don't know anything about horses, but domestic pets get worm medicine all the time.

Wow, you've got that many worms? Maybe they're too crowded? I'll bet they aren't getting enough food if they are that dense.

My easy harvesting method is to lay burlap over the top of a new bin filled with bedding. Scoop/dump some vc and worms from the old bin and keep it in the light. The worms will naturally migrate through the burlap into the new bin to get away from the light.
Quickly look through the vc for worms and eggs and put into a pail or empty bin, and pile some more on the burlap, go have a coffee and come back and repeat. My favourite method by far.

jasdip, I tried the burlap method of separating worms from castings last week. I had some compost which I had picked through pretty well, but which still had right many small worms. I spread burlap over the top tray in my tiered bin, dumped the compost onto the burlap and left the light on overnight.
In the morning, guess what I found!!
The big worms from below had joined crawled up to join the babies above the burlap!
ARGHH.
The place was crawling with them.
Guess the compost wasn't done enough, eh?
Or maybe I spread too thick a layer.
mbetts

LOL.....you poor thing mbetts. I'm thinking it was too thick a layer, and the light didn't bother them enough to go underground.

sbryce,

I've had a renegade group of about 5 or 6 worms (I swear they are the same ones) who crawl up the sides of my bin every night and nestle at the top of the lid, as you describe, not sure what's getting to them but I found this thread very helpful! Thanks to all the contributors.

I wanted to know what you all thought of this:

I asked the guy who I bought the worms from about why they might be crawling up to the top of the lid at night (they're Eisenia Fetida not nightcrawlers so this does seem unusual) and he suggested that it was because we've had a full moon over the last few nights and they were looking for the moonlight.

Crazy?

j

optimum worm bin temps for worms are 70 degrees F to 80 degrees F. any hotter than 80 degrees F you can have crawl off. your apt temp is too hot, do let bin settle, do not mix the whole thing up or fluff it up, that creates alot of heat. fan blowing can dry the bin fast so do check and spray with water, freeze the food scraps to help cool the bin. keep ice bottles till your apt temp is cooler. the worms can live without adding food for long periods of time. they can eat the molds and funguses that grow on paper and cardboard there should be enough for them to eat till you can find another place to get food scraps. i would sugest not adding coffee ground because they will add more heat to an already hot bin, wait till you have cooler weather. you could add a little corn syrup or molasiss mix with a little water pour under a layer of bedding, it helps get some organisums to multiply and grow so the worms can eat them, but be carefull it will attract fruit flys and ants. good luck!