I believe monmer is correct. just add damp bedding, some food and more damp bedding and your bin will probably come alive.

Worms are mostly water, and when they die in the super-bacteria-rich environment of the worm bin, they vanish very fast. It's rare to see a dead worm inside a bin. I would guess that in a slowly drying worm bin, they would have gone in and down as much as they could, instead of crawling outward, where their instinct would tell them it's even dryer. When they escape en masse it's generally because something very urgent is driving them out, like lack of air or poisons produced by anerobic decomposition.

I went through this same thing. I neglected my worms for too long and I came back to find the bin totally devoid of worm activity. I misted it savers like times over a month so the moisture level got back to where it should be. I didn't see worms come back from the cocoons though. If they did they were too small for me to see. I bought more worms to repopulate e bin.

What were you expecting to find, skeletons? ))

If worms do indeed leave cocoons behind before they die (as many have stated), shouldn't your bin start to show signs of new worm hatchlings once it has been re-wet and stocked with some food source?

Harry

Take this with a grain of salt because I got this off an internet search... cocoons will take at least 4 weeks to hatch and could be up to many months depending upon soil conditions. Moisture and increasing temperatures stimulate the hatching process.

i have all so read that cocoons can lie dormant for a very long time and will hatch when conditions are right for them to hatch. sorry this is a late post but i am going over some old posts.