Last night I discovered that the harmless (or so I thought) moths which I had sometimes seen in our pantry recently are actually pantry moths - I’d never heard of them before. Their larvae have now infested our pantry (shudder), and I’ve found them inside boxes of cereal and soup, inside chocolate and muesli bars and anything involving nuts or raisins. While much of our pantry goods are stored inside solid plastic containers with tight lids, I’m sure they are in most of the other things, so I’m chucking pretty much everything else out besides spices.
The plan is then to vacuum thoroughly, wash all shelves and walls, and restock - is there anything else I should be doing? From the sites I’ve read they can be pretty hard to eradicate.
You have to work at it. Clean the shelves, throw out anything that might have a chance of harboring them (they seem to prefer grains). If the food is open, you should toss it.
Keep things clean and look for any moths hatching out (they tend to hide on the ceiling). Kill any you find. Keep it up until you no longer see any of them.
Once you’ve battened down the edible hatches because the stuff leaves a residue that is best not consumed, flea bombs - the newer high tech ones whose main ingredients are pyrethroids such as Tetramethrin or Cypermethrin, common active ingredients found in Raid flea bombs and flying insect killers.
Avoid Raid fumigators that contain Permethrins which are more stable, (slower to breakdown in the environment) and significantly more toxic to mammals, (esp cats, according to the wiki article)
If you’re hesitant to use these chemicals, simply getting rid of all larval food sources should do the trick… and at least for a while, keep all foodstuffs in tupperware-like containers.
God, yes they do. I thought it was confined to the packaged food as luckily most of our bulk goods are stored in these, but I found heaps of the larvae in the almond container. The one I leave the lid cracked on to grab a couple when I go past. The ones I eat without looking… shudder…
The epicentre seems to be the gap at the back of the pantry combined with the rye flour. Apparently the buggers can actually get into and out of the sealed plastic containers.
They can burrow through plastic bags but not through tupperware or similar containers - can only sneak in when the lid is removed. I had a problem with oatmeal containers, they can burrow through these, quaker oats type cardboard/paper cylinders, ruined my stash.
Tupperware (or similar - can be an off brand) and you’ll be fine, just don’t let moths sneak in when lid is removed.
Sorry, just saw this. Ziplock bags can be burrowed though, are not safe. You’ll need glass, metal or tupperware-type plastics for flour as well. Unopened sacks of flour are also unsafe, can be easily burrowed through. It has happened in my own cupboard - I went through a bread-making phase for a year or two and found out the difficult way that even sealed (that is, factory sealed - which are only paper) bags of flour are at risk.
I keep a lot of my staples in the freezer. Sugar, flour, rice, hot cereal mixes like Cream of Wheat and oatmeal, instant mashed potatoes, corn meal, anything like that is in the fridge freezer. I also put boxes of cold cereal in the deep freeze for a couple of days when I first bring them home, in case they have eggs or actual insects in them.
And, in fact, I might bugbomb the house again this year. I do this every few years, because our house is old and has any number of small openings where bugs can and do enter.
I think I must use mine up quickly enough that it’s not a problem, since I’ve been doing this I haven’t had any more infestations. I do use flour a lot though. I agree that it’s not as well protected as canisters with seals or tupperware.
In addition to the tossing of infested food products, securing of new food products in impenetrable containers, and vacuuming all of the crevices in your cabinets where eggs might be lurking, I would also recommend getting some pantry moth traps (which can be found relatively inexpensively on ebay, see here for an example). I’ve used the type I linked to. It attracts the male moths using a pheromone and they get stuck to the glue on the trap. With no males to breed with, they should die out. It might take a few cycles before they clear up, so get a few traps so you can change them out after a few weeks.
I’ve read lots of times that these pests seem repelled by dried bay leaves. A jar of bay leaves is cheap enough. So if something isn’t going to be sealed in an air-tight plastic or glass container, drop a bay leaf in top.
My brother used some type of wasp to solve the issue. It was an index card of eggs that hatch into tiny wasps that you can barely see with your eyes. They flew around his house for a week on a seek and destroy mission. That was the end of his moth problem.
I used Diatamatous (sp?) Earth, food grade, in a ketchup squeeze bottle, a little squeeze into every nook and cranny and they were done. My pantry is made of tongue and groove so there were thousands of gaps and cracks to cover. But it worked.
agree the larvae will eat through plastic and paper bags.
if you want to keep food and accept that eating some insects are part of life then you could place a food stock in the freezer every two weeks for a few days, this gives the eggs time to hatch. freezing doesn’t kill eggs just larvae and adults.
moths can also live elsewhere in the house in pet food and dried flowers.
Not sure where I’ll find DE, appears to be mail order in Australia only. But seems like Boric Acid in borax has the same effect - good suggestion. I have both borax and bay leaves in the cupboard so will deploy both today, and I’m also going out to find traps too. eHow suggests mixing 1 part borax with 3 parts cornmeal and leaving that out in the pantry.
I’m not quite sure (and especially don’t know about in Oz), but you could look in a hardware super-store type place (here in the US, we have Lowe’s and Home Depot). This is because diotomatious earth is sometimes used in in-ground swimming pool filters. I know the swimming pool I grew up with used it, and we always got it at Home Depot. . .
I had an infestation a few years ago and so removed EVERYTHING in the food cupboard, chucked anything that had weevils or their larvae, and put everything else in containers. Before re-stocking the pantry, I just got a can of Mortein and sprayed every nook and cranny and left it overnight.