Originally published at: Experience the thrill of pantry moth eradication! | Boing Boing
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Having gone through multiple rounds of examining every box, bag, carton and jar in my cupboards for moth activity, scrubbing every accessible nook or cranny, replacing moth traps, double sealing likely targets in vacuum bags or glass containers, I now take sweet, sweet revenge on the creatures by smashing them with my swiffer as they hang out on the wall over the pantry door. I can even catch them on the wing, I’ve had so much practice! But the traps do help.
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I used food-grade diatomaceous earth for foods targeted by critters. It’s safe because you’re using the power of millions of dead sea creatures to scratch them to death.
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Horny, sticky time for mothkind.
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I use a vacuum cleaner to suck them out the air.
Also properly sealing the carbs in the pantry cuts off the food supply and keeps them well under control
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I’ve found they also thrive in other rooms as well. They love to eat cotton clothing.
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I used many of these when they were hiding in the towels in my bathroom (not eating them, but they seemed to love to just lurk in there). They were spectacularly ineffective, though to be fair, they weren’t this exact brand.
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Great. I thought it was only wool I had to worry about.
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The fabric-eating moths and the pantry moths are different species. I’ve had them both at different times.
With the pantry moths, the key is to kill all the larvae, eggs and adults you can find, then store food in air tight containers. The traps helped, but I think were more useful as an indicator of whether or not the little bastards were still around.
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Pretty much what i would recommend. Use proper air tight containers for everything that any bugs might be inclined to get into.
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Experience the thrill of pantry moth eradication!
“Pantry Moths”? I completely missed the “r” the first time I read that headline.
The moths or the traps?
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First met those in Italy, where they were called flour moths…
We found the most effective treatment was sealed containers for food, and bouquets of dried lavender, they cleared out quickly.
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In my experience one of the most effective ways to end an infestation of pantry moths is to get yourself an even bigger infestation of Argentine ants. (They go after the moth larva.)
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I’ve found that the only thing that works against moths is religiously putting everything that moth larvae like to eat into airtight containers. Moth larvae are quite good at drilling through commercial packaging, so keeping food items such as nuts in their original bags – even unopened – may not work.
The moth traps are useful for detecting if you have a moth problem but aren’t a complete anti-moth solution. This is because AFAIR they are designed to attract and exterminate Mr. Moth, but it’s Mrs. Moth who lays the eggs that turn into larvae that spoil your food. Obviously if (thanks to the trap or whatever) Mr. Moth and Mrs. Moth never manage to meet, no larvae – but there’s no guarantee that your kitchen cupboard won’t be targeted by Mrs. Moth after she and Mr. Moth already got up to some hanky-panky together elsewhere.
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Euww, that itches. And are you sure putting a sticky trap down there is really going to help?
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The only way to actually get rid of pantry moths is to do a full purge of any contaminated foodstuffs (that’s how we got rid of ours). I could see these stickies helping reduce the overall moth population/food infestation rate, but you’re not going to get rid of all of them unless you get rid of all the eggs and larvae (in the food).
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Putting stuff in the freezer for a while also works well. I’m going to be reorganizing one of my freezers to hold grains and their offshoots, so there will be even fewer potential moth habitats in my pantry.
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I had a bad infestation that persisted and did all of these things to finally end it:
- Put all of the bulk foods like flour, etc that they liked to eat in the freezer overnight
- emptied the pantry completely
- sprayed every surface with a tea tree oil solution
- swabbed a q-tip coated in tea tree oil in every shelf pin hole in the pantry–if you look, you might see that they laid their eggs in those unused holes for the shelves
- wiped down the items before placing back into the pantry
- placed every item like rice, flour, etc in the freezer when i got home from the grocery store–especially if it came from a bulk bin
- placed a few of those moth traps about; i only caught a few after all of that and didn’t see another one flying around
- scattered some bay leaves in the pantry
Basically I followed every bit of advice the internets gave me all at once. I don’t know which one of those things worked, but it was probably all of them together.
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The last option would’ve been to burn everything down
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