Worm Bin Insect Pest Treatment

Today I received a nice surprise at work.  Inside the old dry sludge storage building where I used to vermicompost years ago, I have maintained a small wood chip/sawdust pile for dry shavings used for stray dog bedding in the city kennels during winter.

Some weeks ago we had a flood which rose enough to enter the building and so I knew the pile was probably moist at the least,a perfect place to find Woodlice, AKA Roly Poly's.  Bowl in hand, I set out to harvest a bunch of land prawns!

My hunch was correct at least in that the pile had gotten soaked during the flood.  Started poking around the edge and got a surprise.  There were several Eisenia fetida baby worms in perhaps a handful of the material.  The one on the left in the photo is an E fetida adult...

Worm on right is some unknown lumbricus species I think, just a common earthworm and only three of them in the whole pile.  I did find several woodlice but saving those for another article.  The next three hours were spent sifting through the pile to gather the red wigglers.  Probably have very close to a thousand, ranging in size from newly hatched 1/4" long to 3" egg laying adults and several cocoons. 

Now for the problem and solution.  Outdoor wormeries contain an abundance of every critter one can imagine. Most do not pose that big a threat outdoors if wormery moisture levels are kept right but we do not want to bring these pests, such as mites, ants, nematodes, centipedes, gnat eggs, etc., inside to infest what is to be a commercial operation someday, not to mention it is in my home at the moment. I saw quite a few mites in the gathering so...

Sitting here thinking and talking to my wife.  Had started to wash them over a fine mesh sieve but that proved to be a mess and tiny, wet worms are near impossible to pick up.  Had just taken the bucket back out to the garage with some added leaf mulch, deciding it was probably best to just use them in an outdoors wormery.  Wife asked, "will your diatomaceous earth kill the mites without hurting the worms?"

Hmmm. I thought just recently I had read DE would kill worms.  Well it does but not earthworms. It kills any insect and parasites.  Actually learned something I never knew about worm farming in a quick research, some worm farmers actually use DE for this very purpose and there is some solid research to prove it.

I'll give that bucket-o-worms a good dose of DE, wait about a week and give a close inspection for mites and report back.

DE will kill any insect.  It is made up of microscopic fossilized diatoms and food grade DE is commonly given to warm blooded livestock as an organic de-worm treatment for internal parasites.  People even consume food grade DE for various purposes.  In comparison, it would be like a human crawling across a sea of razor blades. DE cuts the insect exoskeleton and causes dehydration, resulting in death.  Need to be careful to keep it in the worm bins with attempting an insect farming operation.

http://www.dirtdoctor.com/view_org_research.php?id=41