I am on another forum where people are reporting worms surviving temps lower than we ever thought they could survive. They may actually be OK. But at temps near freezing, they won't be very active.

Hard to say what condition your worms are in since we can't see them. I had the same concurns and actually lost an intire bin last summer due to not enough moisture. I have gone to a larger bin plus a large windrow of horse manure thanks to experience shared by mendopete. Pete's experience shows that worms need not be miro-managed if given room to roam. His idea is that rather than striving for perfect conditions in a bin,increase size and keep it covered to slow drying and sudden drenching from rain. Water the heck out of one end/corner/area and worms will seek out the conditions they like best between too wet and too dry.

Keep on maintaining the bin,even if you froze all worms to death,nature provides for such clamanties by alowing cocoons to survive where worms can't.

Is that air temperature or soil temp? Inside or outside temp? just asking because if that is the reported lows for your area and they are say inside a garage then the ambient air was probably well above that and the bin contents slightly above ambient.

The light will certainly add some warmth just make sure it is in a safe area, the general recommendation for brooder lamps is to use a ceramic socket and hang from a metal chain or wire keeping the cord well away from the shield.

Time will tell on the outcome of the worms in the bin but remember that they have been placing cocoons in the bin that will survive the cold and renew the colony.

My worms live outside and our lows here this last winter were for a short time down to low teens yet through the winter they have been active in the buckets sitting on the compost pile with straw piled around them. The buckets have holes in the bottom so they can retreat into the soil below if they wish and all of our kitchen scraps go into them along with crumpled cardboard.

These are E. Hortensis so I do not know if they are more cold hardy or not than E Foetedia as I have read reports saying both. I do know that all winter long they have been found shallow in the ground various places when pulling weeds or clearing mulched areas.

Awwwwww, they are in a play pen. And you have to purchase two more matching buckets.

Actually there is plenty of space in that bed for two dozen buckets at least and that is the eventual plan. I have plenty of buckets to do this but they are actively being used elsewhere and the current ten are handling out kitchen scraps so yes I need to purchase more, a lot more but I can take my time and grow with the worms.

The playpen was necessary to keep the chickens from scattering the straw. There are lot of worms in that straw around the buckets, probably many more than actually inside of them.

On the OPs topic of cold we have had just into freezing nights the last two and it looks like we have one more cold blast coming in a week or so then its time to turn on the warm. Looking forward to life going into acceleration mode. This was an exceptionally mild winter as was last winter too, I see talk that the weather we are having is what some say is the new norm as our climate adjusts.