We live in southern california in a one story home in a canyon. For the past few months we have been bombarded with little white moths flying at will from room to room.
Please provide suggestions as to how to locate their hideout…where mama moth may be laying her eggs and how to destroy these creatures completely.
If they are about 1cm long, and skinny rather than broad, they could be pantry moths/grain moths.
I had an infestation of these a few years ago, and they were quite difficult to eradicate. There are traps you can buy, which contain pheromones to attract and a sticky surface to trap. They are a bit pricey (#3 each) at the hardware store, but I don’t know a better way to kill 'em. I suggest one in each room, replaced often when the sticky part gets filled with dead bodies.
But, the more important part is to eliminate their source of food/breeding ground. What we had to do was completely empty our pantry, throwing out any potentially infested items (open cereal boxes, flour bags, cracker boxes, etc.) Then we bought a few dozen of the “Glad” or “Ziplock” semi-disposable containers. We put anything that could remotely be considered a food source into these containers. That means as soon as you get back from the grocery store, empty all your cereal boxes into plastic, all your brownie/cake mixes, all crackers, flour, etc. go into these plastic containers.
Even so, we would periodically get an increase in the flying devils, and fight back with a few more traps, and a few nights entertainment along the lines of jumping and standing on furniture trying to squash the bugs.
Good luck!
I had this problem too. The little buggers also eat dog food. My dogs had slopped bits of food down one of our heating vents. It was moth heaven. When I pulled the pipes apart to clean out the junk, thousands of moth carcasses rained down on my head. Ick.
We regularly bring these home from the grocery or “buying club”. We have a lot of flour and grain for baking around and they multiply quickly. All the clean up above is important but we have resorted to house geckos. I have four or so living in the pantry. A little water dish and all the moths they can eat. We rarely see them and they are not frightening and quite clean. My wife swears the traps attract moths from outside and as far away as the neighbors and the dog “hides” biscuts all over the house. The geckos work wonders.
We had a problem like that once, years ago. Once they are in your house, it is extremely hard to get them out. However, they go where the food is.
Like BCE suggested, we removed the food, and bagged anything up we wanted to keep. (Most of it we threw out, just to be safe.) Then we resorted to Weapons of Moths Destruction.
We used a fogger (having bagged foodstuffs and moved it to a different place). We did not return the food to the kitchen for a day or two, then we followed it up with another fogger (to catch anything that hatched or we missed the first time). Then a complete and thorough cleaning of the kitchen, followed by returning the food to where it went. (We had simple meals or ate out a lot during this time).
We didn’t really have problems with it after that. I can’t remember which brand of fogger we used, other than looking for one that had on the label the type of insect we were looking to eliminate.
We shall utilize your advice forthwith. Thank you for the advice.