<p>I’m sure many of you know what I’m talking about. They’re those small skinny moths that seem to arrive uninvited into your home. Right now, I’ve got some. I need to get rid of them before they take up residence in my panty or in our wool clothes! (They’ve already eaten a couple of holes in 2 of hubby’s sweaters!!! ugh!!!</p>
<p>I have pets, so I don’t want to use spray something that might be harmful for them (or us) to breathe.</p>
<p>I’ve tried bay leafs (that’s supposed to be a natural deterrent) and of course, cedar stuff in the closets.</p>
<p>What else can I do.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that they come in via the outside of food packages and such from the store.</p>
<p>Ugh we live in a very old home and even with a reno I see the moths occasionally and have had the little buggers in the pantry. I just keep all my flour products in the freezer and routinely take everything out of the pantry and clean like crazy and toss any grain products that have made their way to the back and are old. I do use the Pantry traps and it seems to help keep them at bay and try move forward grain products and put new toward the back. I just cleaned last week and found an year old box of Orzo that looked suspicious around the glue flap. Hate to toss unopened food, but…</p>
<p>I hate flour moths. The pantry traps work. For prevention, freezing the grains overnight to kill the larvae works. Orange oil works really well – drops into the bag of birdseed.</p>
<p>There are traps made by Safer which we get at Lowe’s, they are two little cardboard boxes with a powerful glue, and a pheromone sticker you take out of the cellophane and put inside the trap. They work great when you have those things flying around the kitchen because of the old box of orzo, or in our case it was birdseed for the feeder we had foolishly stored in the basement.</p>
<p>I know that Pantry moths eat grains, but I’m not sure that they won’t resort to some wool, too. I know that there are wool moths, too. Do they look the same or different? These look the same.</p>
<p>They all look pretty much the same unless you are a moth or an entomologist! Smallish, streamlined shape, light brown/tan with spots. </p>
<p>I babysat years ago for a guy who worked in food wholesaling. He told me the eggs from flour weevils and moths are in the food we buy. Already. Because in order to kill them they would have to put so much pesticide in the food, you would not be able to eat the stuff.</p>
<p>I have had some major problems with the little moths that eat wool. I think it’s not the moths that make holes in wool, it’s the larvae. So you have to wash or clean everything, bag up all the wool, vacuum really well.</p>
<p>Everything in my pantry is super sealed up, in glass or large, snap-lock bins.</p>
<p>I just had a moth invasion and learned a whole lot about them. I was seeing them mostly in the evenings, fluttering around where the lights were on. I was all panicky about our clothes and carpets but really didn’t want to spray pesticides. So first I tried the pheromone traps but even with ten of them all around the house, I didn’t catch a single moth. So I preserved a few slightly smushed samples on a piece of scotch tape and took them to my local Terminix headquarters. The manager was amazingly nice and offered to photograph them and send the pictures to their entomologist. He called me the next day to say that they were angoumois grain moths who especially like corn. He asked if I had any ornamental corn sitting around or if the moths were in the pantry. I said no but made plans to clean out the pantry anyway. Meanwhile, there weren’t quite as many moths around and my google research told me that grain moths don’t eat fabric so I was a bit more relaxed. A couple of days later, I was telling my cleaning lady the story and she said she’d seen a moth on a sheaf of dried wheat in the living room! Which I had totally forgotten that I had. We looked at it and it was riddled with moths. Apparently that is where they were spending the day and then they fluttered about in the evening. Sooo…do you have ornamental grain? If they are clothes moths, you will rarely see an adult moth as they avoid the light. They especially like dark closets and carpets that are under furniture. Grain moths are attracted to light. In the end, I didn’t need to spray or clean out the pantry. It’s been a couple of weeks and the moths are gone. Good luck!</p>
<p>We had a terrible pantry moth invasion last spring/summer. We threw away a ton of stuff from our pantry - anything that wasn’t in a jar or a can, so all crackers, cookies, pasta, rice, etc. Took out everything else and did a thorough cleaning of every inch of the pantry (plus the jars and cans). </p>
<p>Since then we’ve kept all grains in zip-lock bags and haven’t had any moths return.</p>
<p>Even with all the moths around the house for a few weeks, we didn’t get a single moth hole in any clothing. Must be a different kind of moth.</p>
<p>Trust me. Nobody has ten of these meal moths. You have hundreds of them. You will never get rid of them and their eggs by “cleaning out the pantry”. Or by throwing out the ornamental wheat stalks in the living room.</p>
<p>Get the pantry pest traps. Little cardboard tents with meal moth phormone sex lures. Put four of them around the kitchen. They attract all the males (or was it females?) and eradicate the population. It doesn’t take long. Generations are short in the family tree of the meal moth.</p>
<p>Do it now. The sooner you start, the sooner they will be wiped out. Keep putting out traps every few weeks until you are no longer seeing any moths in the traps. Honestly, if I could remember, I’d probably put out a couple of traps every year just as insurance.</p>
<p>I didn’t have ten moths, I put out ten little cardboard tent pheromone traps. At one point I had six traps in one room, hoping to incite a moth orgy. I never did catch even a single moth but that’s because I was using cloth moth traps (purchased from my carpet dealer), not grain moth traps. And I share your skepticism about getting rid of them so easily but unless they are now in hiding somewhere, they certainly seem to be gone. The Terminix man, who had everything to gain by coming here to spray (he didn’t charge me at all for the entomologist’s diagnosis) said to give it a little time after getting rid of the source. Fingers crossed, it seems to have worked.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, get rid of immediately the flour or whatever that’s allowing them to reproduce! Freezing in the freezer works too. We once had a huge population of those pantry moths hatching in a bag of neglected bird seeds, and a few days later they were all over the place :eek:.</p>
<p>why , oh why do we have to share our homes with insects ?
I have an oddball little bug population hanging around my windowsills in my kitchen and the bedroom above the kitchen</p>
<p>No, the clothing moths are a different species from the flour moths. They are both small, beige, and are attracted to light so they can be confused.</p>
<p>I agree with everyone who said the pheromone traps helps. We had a major infestation and lost a ton of good food. One Christmas after 2 weeks away we came back to a house full of moths ! And worms on the ceiling. It was horrible. I am sure we ate some worms inadvertently. </p>
<p>Another thing that would help is invest in some airtight containers. I got mine from Costco. I put almost everything in them. So even if something is infected, the moths and worms can’t get out. Of course they can’t get into the food in just case it out there somewhere too. After almost a year of infestation, I am moth free for about 5 months now. We did find one lone moth 5 months ago but have not seen any since. Keeping fingers crossed.</p>