I may have an answer to our worm bin migrations. Water saturation and CO2 buildups may contribute to it, but I have triggered 2 migrations and stopped 3. What I found was that my migration problem did not occur until I increased the stock population to compost roots out of my garden topsoil. I weighed the wormstock that was in a soil sample of 1 cu ft and found the stock in a migrating sample was close to 2 lbs, while a non migrating sample had a stock volume of 3/4 lb or less. I lowered the stock population in 3 bins to 1 lb per cu ft and stopped the migrations, while increasing the population in two bins started migrations. This tell me that it is nothing more than a natural evolutionary response to over population. I'm sure there should be some worm farming books that cover this, but the ones I have do not. I guess I will be actively testing containment systems for migration control so that I can use high population for maximum compost capabilities. And I wanted to believe they were being called to "the mothership" :>)

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), February 09, 2001

Answers

Darn!!!! And I was just buying into the mothership theory!!!

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), February 09, 2001.

Hi Jay,

Doesn't it say in "worms eat my garbage" that if you leave them in the bedding too long, eventually it will become toxic to them and they'll die and become part of the bedding? I'm guessing that they may be moving, not necessarily because of overcrowding, but possibly because the bedding has become too close to pure castings for their taste. Obviously you're the worm expert here (and you've gone and gotten me all jazzed about starting another bed), but it was just a thought I wanted to share with you.

-- Laura Jensen (lrjensen@nwlink.com), February 10, 2001.

Laura, Yes, bed toxicity is a factor in migration, however , I have seen the triggered migation occur in a new bed of slurry, bedding and peatmoss also. The only toxicty that I might have added would have been citric acid from some orange peel in the slurry. Over the next few days, I am going to try moving all my stock into fresh bins and collect more results focusing on the population and toxicity. I think the toxicity can be plotted by teaing the medium and using worms from other bins as a "litmus test", sorta like a coalmine canary.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), February 10, 2001.

Laura, Sorry, I posted too soon, I wanted to say one other thing. I'm no expert on this, just an old high school geek reliving basic biology days, trying to learn with the help of some freinds. Please share any ideas you have, cause this is fun and will benifit all our gardens.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), February 10, 2001.