I'm in a cold climate and worms love my outdoor compost bin, come back every spring. I assume that's mostly the worms laying eggs as the cold approaches. I've heard that worms can stand a afreeze and just wriggle away as if nothing happened, but never seen such a clear case as yours.

Hope you got through the freeze safe.

We got through the freeze just fine. Only lost power for a few minutes one time and no water leaks.

Here's what astounded me with the worms, is I have 2 separate small bins, each less than 2' square, and both had the bedding frozen into solid blocks that I couldn't break apart, but when they thawed, the worms started moving and are now doing fine.

Have any photos of those bins you could share? Amazing story!

My outside bins are quite large and made of plywood but when the temps have been cold enough I've only had the outer few inches freeze up with the worms staying kind of huddled up towards the center where it hadn't frozen.

I didn't take a pic of my frozen bins cause I'm an old woman who just doesn't take pics much. Also didn't know it was so unusual till they had thawed and I found out the worms survived. My bins are a Vermihut 5 tray worm bin (with red wigglers) and a recycled styrofoam cooler from an Omaha steak gift (with european nightcrawlers). Neither is all that big, so they froze quite thoroughly. In fact, I couldn't get the trays apart in the Vermihut, so just put them all in the sun to thaw. I just don't understand how my worms survived, but sure happy they did. Thought I was going to have to shell out over $80 to replace the two types of worms.

I don't think it's that unusual, they survive in colder climates than yours with no problem - although I don't know how much of that is them surviving a freeze/thaw cycle and how much is the cocoons surviving. Perhaps rare to get such a clear example of the medium they're in freezing solid.

mine have survived flooding, the worms moved to the middle of the bed. You could cover the bins with a tarp etc during cold snaps.