It's pretty normal to be intensely interested in your bins, especially for the first few weeks, but too much digging around might kill some of the worms or other homebodies.

Other than adding to the bin(s), I usually don't check too often, but every couple of weeks, I do enjoy rooting around pretending to "areate the bin", but in reality, mostly to see the population increases.

Here is a link that might be useful: Our Earthworm Farm

I know for a fact I killed some of my worms because I was digging too much. I was digging once a day at one point. I dig a lot less now. Maybe every couple of weeks with my Euros ( because I still worry about them) and not at all with the red wrigglers except for feedings of course.

Sylvie

We dig around and check them about twice a week or if someone comes over and has any interest in them at all. As this is a homeschool science project for my son, he needs to check them out and just be involved. If they just sat there and we only opened them to feed them I think he would loose a lot of interest in the whole project. We have been very excited about having the little babies in there now. Over all this is one neat project and mom can not wait until Oct when we plan to harvest some castings for the garden and put some in an indoor bin for the winter.

Vicky~

I check my bins out whenever I feed them. 4 years into this and I still cannot leave them alone. They are so used to it, that they don't really duck from the light too much anymore..:) Be gentle..but observation is a big part of keeping bins healthy...and it's fun!

I don't know if worms don't hide from light only because they are used to the light. I'm 4 months into this and whenever I feed my red worms they don't hide from the light very much. Most of them just lay there or move into hiding slowly. There must be other factors involved: the gentleness of the digging, the depth of the digging,. Or maybe it's because the worms that are not disturbed often are less likely to be stressed and thus less into hidding. Or it's because they are not given too much coffee grounds. :-grin

I also raise Euros, my experience has been that the more i root around in the bain the more crispies i find the next morning. They arent quite as tolerant as other species to being disturbed.

I also am running an experiment bin with regualra nightcrawlers. They also do not tolerate too much disruption.

I can usually fin enough in the top 3-4 inches of my bins to satisfy anyones curiousity, so when asked that is about all the bedding i move around.

Most of the info ive read says that red wigglers are more tolerant to being disrupted. So i guess it basically comes down to which species you are raising.

Bryan