Those are Black Soldier Fly Larvae.
Depending on who you ask:
Abandon All Hope- Ye Who Enter Here
or
Hallelujah

Hey, Kelser--those are, as you now know, black soldier fly larvae. There's more than one thread here about the things, now that you have the term. Whether or not they're a problem depends on your situation and your goals. I'm assuming this is an outdoor bin, and that mud dauber impersonators aren't an issue.

From your pictures, your bin's VERY wet. This won't bother the grubs a bit, and the common composting worms seem to handle moisture well, but most worm authorities recommend a drier setup than you have right now, and if your goal is to produce vermicompost, rather than simply diverting organics from landfill, you may want to add a ton of bedding. Dried leaves, shredded brown paper bags or newspaper, coir, etc.

Good luck!

DSF

They will eat the food faster than the worms will. Making moisture much faster. Are there no egg carton, coffee trays, corrigated cardboard, or paper bags crying to get into the bin? I would get half a foot of bedding and put the activity on top of it.

I'm with the Hallelujah crowd. But seeing as how I do not have any yet it is easy to say. I'd like some in an outside bin. Maybe reality will change my mind.

Sorry for the lack of info, this is the 3rd or 4th layer on my worm bin. I just harvested off the bottom and moved this tray to the top a couple of weeks ago. I got lazy last week and just threw some soft fruit on the top to hurry up and get it in the bin. Under that blue plastic is a ton of bedding :)

So I first noticed these on my outside compost tumbler lid, although darker in color and slower to move. Then after I threw this fruit in I realized they were in my worm bin too. The worm bin was indoors until this spring when I moved it into the garage. They are not a huge problem, although Im tired of the buzzing around when one morphs into a fly! I guess bottom line will the hurt my worm bin that I have primarily to produce organic fertilized compost? And if I do need to try and rid myself of them can I just swap back to mostly paper and cardboard until they are gone?

You will never 'be rid of them'. But on a lighter note- if you feed just paper products, they will go dormant. This means that your worms will survive, and that is a good thing. As you harvest out the VC, the BSFL will progressively decrease. This returns your worm habitat to a worm habitat, instead of a stinking maggotry. Lotsa luck!

They won't hurt your worms unless you feed them so much they start creating too much heat. They won't eat paper products or leaves, so you can discourage them by switching to that food stock for a while. They're also going to go dormant once temps drop below 60-70F. Unless adult BSF from outside can get back into your garage, none of the flies born inside the garage will mate & lay eggs.

I've been trying 2 summers to get a colony of these grubs going. No go so far. It just doesn't get hot enough in my area for them to establish a large enough colony to keep going through the winter. I know they're here and they do lay eggs, but only in small groups.

They're great composters, but my guess is a BSFL bin will take a bit more care than a worm bin to avoid anaerobic conditions. I only have a few hundred, so it's not a big deal to keep things under control. It's when you have gallons worth of them that things get exciting and possibly messy.

Here's what my BSFL bin looked like last year.

Andrew

Adult BSF will and do mate and lay eggs, whether from outside or born inside the garage. I have read on the net (I will have to find the source, shoulda bookmarked it) about folks raising these nasty bastards (my son's name for them) in greenhouses. I think it had something to do with hog waste, but I will check it out later (got to go to work now).

I think the Phoenix Worm folks raise them in greenhouses, but BSF supposedly need plenty of vertical space since they mate in flight. Most garages probably aren't big enough. That said, maybe they've adapted and found a way to get things done in tight quarters. But the more likely scenario is they mate outside and find a way back into the garage to lay eggs.

Andrew