I was doing laundry the other day and emptying the dryer lint filter. It’s amazing how many tiny fibers and bits come off the laundry. It reminded me of clothes moths and how they feed on fabrics. I don’t often talk about clothes moths because they just don’t come up as pests very much. However, I’ve had two really interesting situations dealing with clothes moths. Let’s get into them!
Quick background, there are two species of clothes moths: webbing and casemaking. Webbing clothes moths are more common. Like all our pest moth species, it is the larval stage that is eating and causing all the damage. They feed on lots of different fabrics, but especially wool and they like fish food too. With all the food sources they can feed on, it can be tough to locate all their sources in a home or area.
That brings us to my first case. It was a museum, which makes sense because museums are susceptible to pests that feed on hides, fabrics, feathers, and other animal based products. What was a bit different for this one was there were no fabrics or anything they might feed on where the adults were being found. It was in a sculpture area. Areas around this room had no food sources and few moths were found outside this one area.
As I mentioned with my drier, lint is a perfect food source. But without lint in the area… we had to find the lint. It wasn’t easy. There was a staircase in the room. That staircase was not solid, there were small gaps underneath each step. That was over a closet that had been locked for …. probably years. Over the decades as people walked up and down those stairs, little bits of fibers would naturally fall off their clothes. It gathered in this closet and provided a perfect food source for the developing larvae. Sanitation took care of that and the clothes moth population was no more.
Furs, leather, wool coats, and sweaters all make prime meals for clothes moths. Old upholstery and wool rugs can foster their growth as well. So in a home, there are plenty of spots for these to wreak havoc. One house had been struggling for a while. There was an initial clean out, everything had been laundered or dry cleaned and as much as possible was packed away. A few treatments had been done. Numbers were down, but they weren’t totally going away.
Pheromone monitors are what finally got us to the last little source that was hanging on. Monitors had been placed out and what they showed was that the population was getting smaller, but also the monitors hung higher up (about 8ft) were catching more. On ground level and at eye height, there were not many. So we looked up. Since this was a large closet, there were not just lots of clothes, but there were lights inset into the ceiling. Over the years, the lint from clothes gets in a lot of different places. Including around the fixtures of those inset light filters. We found larvae and webbing all up in there. Cleaned that out, put down a little residual for any eggs we missed, and reset traps. Go figure: nothing on the next visit!
Insects are small and sneaky. They will find the tiniest bits of food to live on and finding them is tricky. If you’ve been struggling with a sticky pest situation, call us. We figure out what’s going on. Contact us here.
Urban Pest Consulting
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