When it rains hard here in Florida, and my uncovered bins get badly soaked, sometimes even drowned, and one or two may even stop draining, there are a few ways I can deal with it. First is bail down to muck then use a sturdy hand fork, scoop or and a container like a quart freezer square and dig/scoop a trough across the width of the bin, piling up the removed soil along the ends of the bin. The excess water will then gather in the 'ditch' I have dug, and I will bail it out of the trough, and/or suck it up with a turkey baster if there isn't too much of it. The higher piled up muck drains into the trough and gives any surviving worms a drier place to retreat to as well. Another way, but somewhat messy way I might deal with it is scoop the wet castings muck material into one or more of those cheap reusable poly or nylon grocery/discount store totes. At half full or so, placed in a dry spot, under a table or awning, these will drain fairly quickly out through the weave and the seams. You can turn this out much drier in a couple hours or overnight at most. Don't leave it much longer though, because depending on how processed your compost is, and it's ingredients/contents, if it dries too much, you may be left with a solid chunk of soil that can be very hard to break up. Another option is to line a few plastic or wire strainer baskets with nylon window screen or burlap and fill them with the muck. The first method disturbs/damages the fewest worms in my experience. At your first opportunity, drill a few more drain holes in your bins, and prop them up on pavers or pots. Lastly, if the bin is wet, but not quite soaking, dig a hole in the middle, or each corner and stuff a big wad of shredded newspaper into the holes. Let the paper absorb the excess moisture, pull it back out and use a garden fork and your hands to loosen up the bin well. You can lay the paper shreds out to dry again in the sun (if it has returned) or, better yet, use them moist to start another bin, or feed a few.

Forgot to add, I let almost all of my fully processed castings dry out completely in a couple large, very finely drilled kiddie pools that are under a sturdy awning out of any chance of rain/weather. I will still go through them a couple times, maybe more, than that while they are still pretty damp and pull out any missed juveniles, growing babies that may hatch out and drop them into a "running" bin with more mature worms.

Wet castings the problem or worm separation? If separation, I think someone posted an idea of a heating pad to chase them out. You'll have to look.

Same question here: ""Wet castings the problem or worm separation?""

If you don't really need to harvest the worms but just to get them out of your finished compost, here's what I've done. I placed a burlap on top another working bin or the bin I was going to re-start and spread the muck on the burlap. If t's not dripping wet, it's OK to have a thick layer/pile, the worms can move down. It will help to force them down by having a light on above it. If it is dripping wet, don't make the pile to high because with the liquid moving down, it will compact the VC and worms got trapped in. Unless you keep an eye on it and loosen up the VC mix every couple hours or so, allowing worms to move down and exit the burlap. Once it's workable, I removed VC from the top and if it's still too wet, air dried it in a cement tray with corr cb in between. Any container will do, or even a piece of tarp. Just don't place it in the sun.

I have this situation with my FT, converted from a 96 gal. Schaefer garbage cart. The bottom opening to get access to the leachate chamber is about 7x10" and 1.5" from the bottom. With bad knees and a bad back, I don't empty it until it overflows and over time, got an accumulation of castings and worms in there too. So in my case, it's always dripping wet.

I would definitely just dump it on a tarp in the sun and scrape off the top and sides as worms retreat from the heat and light. Shouldn't take more than an hour :)

edit: Just make sure a new home is ready for them as they won't be happy once you get to the bottom.

Re my wet castings - I just left the half that I had managed to get the worms out of, in a bucket on the back porch(4-5 days), where it's shaded but dry. This afternoon I sifted those castings through 1/2x1/2 mesh, then 1/4x1/4" mesh. A bit tedious but it worked. Oh, I forgot to mention that I had a chunk of cardboard lining the bottom of the bucket in an attempt to soak up some of the moisture. Guess that's one way to do it.

When I took a closer look at the sifted castings I could not believe the number of cocoons I found. Picked about fifty of them out and put them into one of my other bins. I've never seen anywhere near that many before! Don't have a photo to post yet. Think I might just take a tally tomorrow of just how many are in say 1/4 cup of the castings just to get an idea of the density - how nerdy is that?

Have tried many types of different foods, bedding etc. but having been 2-3 months since last harvest it's hard to say what prompted the worms to lay so many cocoons.

Harry

Well it's been raining this morning so I took the time to count cocoons. I counted the number of cocoons in four 1/4c samples of the sifted castings. They were all very close ranging from 27 to 32 per 1/4 cup. Safe to say that in each cup of sifted castings there were about 120 cocoons! That seems really good to me but having never counted before I have nothing to compare to.

Now I wish I could find a good method to separate those cocoons from the castings to keep the worm count increasing in my bins. At least I know that I'll be adding some worms-in-the-making to any of my garden or planters when I use some of those castings.

Harry

That's a real nice haul of cocoons! What variety of worms are you breeding, do you know?

Dott, I'm quite sure they are red wigglers (EF) judging by their looks, although some seem quite large. Never purchased any worms - I started my bins with worms from my original 2'x2'x4' high compost bin. Had been tossing in mostly kitchen scraps and coffee grounds for about 2 yrs. Put a piece of plywood directly on top of the compost to keep it a bit cooler and wetter and discovered loads of worms one day when I lifted the plywood and gave it a stir. Guess they just found their way in through the open bottom. Bin was about 2/3 full before I realized there were so many worms. The rest as they say is history.

Harry