Comments on: A Mite is a Mite is a Mite? Not Quite!

By: John

John — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:20:34 +0000

Ditto the above, I guess it’s pretty common. thanks!

By: Kurt

Kurt — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:57:34 +0000

I too have recently seen an explosion of the little white guys. Table salt size white specks is a good way to describe what they look like. I’ve only had worms for a little over a week now, and I really did add new food to the bin too soon. Plus, in that new food was a handful of cherry tomatoes, which the mites seem to be concentrated on. For the first week I had no worms on the wall of the bins, but I did see a couple in the last two days. Guess that’s a good indication of an out of balance condition. I’l try to leave them alone for a while and let things get settled down….

By: Bentley

Bentley — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:01:53 +0000

Hi Nancy,
Your ‘pearls’ do indeed sound like the same white mites that I get. They look like some sort of eggs, and a lot of people have similar thoughts as yourself.
I generally just don’t worry about mites in my bins - they don’t do any harm, and likely do their part to help breakdown wastes.

They seem particularly fond of cucumber family wastes - eg. squash, watermelon, zucchini, pumpkin - I’ve heard of people using these materials to attract the mites then simply removing it (along the attached mites) from the bin.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:43:05 +0000

How big are the white mites? My kitchen worm bin has only been going a couple months. Today I found tiny white “pearls” on the sides of the bin that are the size of table salt gains. There were also worm castings all over the sides of the bin. The sides are wet, but the compost doesn’t seem particularly wet. Are the white “pearls” likely to be mites?

This happened one other time a couple weeks ago. I freaked out thinking the white specks were the eggs of some horrible flying pest that would take over my condo. If they could pay the homeowner fees, I’d let them have the condo, but that is another story. That time I set the worm bin outside for two days, and removed what might have been too much pineapple for the worms. No plague or pestilence appeared.

This time I’ve just taken the lid off the bin and covered it with burlap to let it dry. Otherwise, my worms seem happy. There are baby worms, so I would say that worm cocoons look like popcorn kernels when you know for sure you never put popcorn in the bin.

Thanks for your mite ideas.

By: Colleen

Colleen — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:23:51 +0000

We had a massive red mite infestation - where did the red mite come from ? Never had it before and it just appeared when we got some new worms …..