This is a real warning and no joke. If you have birdseed in you house for a pet or for wild birds, you may end up with Pantry Moths. They are small only - about 1/2" wingtip to wingtip. Their maggots are about the size of a grain of rice. And they seem to be able to get into anything. I first found maggots in my cereal. :o The bag was rolled up and the box was closed. After we started reading about them, Patti checked everything and ended up throwing away boxes and bags of food. For awhile, we would have as many as a half dozen flying around our kitchen. They lay invisible eggs on shelves and walls. They are nasty! Patti eventually starved them out. We see only one now and then. But today she cooked some pasta that was stored in Tupperware. Would you believe they somehow got past that seal? Here is one website that addresses how to get rid of them. http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Pantry-Moths There are more sites available. But the real problem comes with the birdseed! Read about storing birdseed which is where I'm sure we got them. We had bags of seed for our parakeet and wild birds sitting around.
Here's another. https://www.todayshomeowner.com/how-to-get-rid-of-pantry-moths-and-larvae-in-your-kitchen/
Yikes!
What creepy little pesk.
I'm catching pure D hell...dealing with fruit flies...in the WINTER!! :'(
We had them once, I used sticky traps to get rid of them.
Yep, back before my wife's cockatiel died a couple years ago we got them in birdseed and they got all over the house. Pest control guys were not very effective in getting rid of them. Haven't seen any in a long time and hope to never see another one.
Yep, my daughter had birds when she lived here and we had moths. We had a box of dog treats (that we forgot about) that was infested with them. About 40! years ago, my soon-to-be wife and I went down to my mom's house (all the siblings went) when my grandpa was in the hospital. We were all sitting around the kitchen and noticed little moths here and there. Then we saw little cocoons in the corners where the popcorn ceiling met the walls - lots of them. So we all started looking for where they were coming from. An old, forgotten about box of cereal was one place. Then we found a old box of dog treats. They were the ones that looked like a pigs-in-blanket (little hot dog wrapped in dough). The larva had eaten all the "hot dogs" and left the dough!
I've had them here a few years ago!
Took quite a while to figure out where they came from!
One thing I do regularly - I take a preemptive strike! When I bring grain products like flour and oatmeal into the house, I put it in the freezer for a week. I figure that should kill off any minuet eggs that may be present. My daughter does that now with her bird seed and that has cut down on her moth problem considerably.
I turned on football and sat down with a beer. I found a moth in my glass. I'm really mad, now! >:(
Quote from: Den Socling on January 22, 2017, 04:51:12 PM
I turned on football and sat down with a beer. I found a moth in my glass. I'm really mad, now! >:(
Was that before or after the first sip? :o
We had them years ago also. We think they came in a box of cereal from the store. They were tough to get rid of. Had to throw everything in all the cabinets out, seal off the kitchen, and set off several of those bug bombs from the vet.
I didn't even get the first sip. :D I might have mentioned that when I found the itty bitty maggots in my cereal, I shoveled them aside and kept eating. ::) Heck, people in some countries munch them down.
What kind of beer?
Molson.
Quote from: Raider Bill on January 23, 2017, 02:15:30 PM
What kind of beer?
Is this information needed to gauge the degree of the tragedy? :D
We've got to start at a base line. Natty light who cares. A good IPA we got problems. :D smiley_beertoast
The man has a point, Roxie. Truth of the matter is, we just remove them and eat or drink. I was listening to Patti talking to herself at lunch today. She was making some instant chicken soup that came in a cardboard box. There was a package of flavoring in the box but the dry noodles were lose. As she was stirring, she would say "darn, there's another one". When she sat down to eat, it was "darn! Another. I thought I got them all." :D
I just came across this in a news article.
"Around the world, about 2 billion people consume insects regularly."
I've heard that too, Den!
Seems a lot of insects are actually consumed while the people are sleeping!
I guess the safer way to avoid eating insects goes to the people who have to use a CPAP unit for sleep apnea! ;)
Patti has most everything moved out on a freezing porch but the danG things keep finding my beer glass. >:(
You jinxed me..
I went to get some parsley and when I tried to shake it out of the bottle nothing. Found it was all connected by tiny spider web looking crap inside the bottle. Looked a bit better and found we will be cleaning the pantry out this week.
I hope you don't start seeing little moths fluttering all of the place.
I drink tonic water with a twist of lemon during the week. Well I just found a moth floating in my glass. >:(
I would be happy to get rid of the blasted fruit flies. Seems everybody in the communtity has trouble with them this year.
We had fruit flies bad a couple months ago but they have died off.
We always have fresh fruit on the counter so constantly fight fruit flies. Tried red wine and ACV under plastic wrap and several store bought traps but they come back.
Try lots of frogs for the fruit flies
Just kiln dry the food first!
Our dog has taken to chasing moths. He isn't very effective but it's highly amusing!
Quote from: Den Socling on February 08, 2017, 05:38:52 PM
Our dog has taken to chasing moths. He isn't very effective but it's highly amusing!
My two dogs (Border Collies) like to chase flies. One is really quite good at it and can catch them. The second one just started and, even though she is much more intelligent than the other, she doesn't quite get it. The fly will go out of the lit area and she will follow. She misses that it turns right around and comes back. She continues to the other end of the house wondering where it went. Over, and over and over again... :-\
Someone please...order the man a bug-a-salt gun and 50 lbs of salt.
I'd need a double barrel bug-a-salt. They are small!
Buy two, tape them together with a dowel across both triggers! Double barrel!
We've had pantry moths for about a year now. Started with them in a bag of whole corn we bought to grind up for cornmeal. Very hard to get rid of. We'll need to get to the cabinets here soon.
A whole year! That is bad news. We have everything outside while we are away for two weeks. Hope we can starve them out. If not, I may buy about a hundred frogs as suggested.
Why frogs, I remember MagicMan posting last summer about the geckos that he has at his house. They should work much better then frogs, just kindly ask him to mail you up a few.
Talked about this with my wife last night, she said the ACE store she used to work at actually had pantry moth traps. Didn't know if you knew this or had tried them.
Heck just watch Andrew Zimmerman enough, I'm sure they're a delicacy somewhere? ::)
I sell them in the hardware store that I work at too.
google Safer pantry moth traps.
They also make a caterpillar spray that works great on those tomato hornworms.
Thanks thecfarm. Google will find anything and Amazon always has it for sale. Yesterday we went to Big Lots, Walmart and CVS looking for a simple wall-mount coat rack for dad's apartment and a new cane. Unbelievably, we found zero coat racks and unsuitable canes. We get back here and I go to Amazon and the mission is accomplished in about a minute. Like I told Patti, it's no wonder that one-line shopping is putting brick & mortar out of business.
It seems a shame in some ways, but makes sense in other ways. I'm a big fan of Amazon Prime. This year at the end of the year after we joined they sent us something saying we saved around $800 in shipping this last year getting stuff. I don't believe that because I don't think we ordered that much at ALL, but we definitely saved the $100 sign up fee. How do they make enough money to stay in business? I've noticed that at least some times the price that has prime shipping is a bit higher than the same thing on ebay, but still not high enough to cover all the charges. Beats me, but I'm happy to have found it. I've bought tools, hardware, birthday and Christmas gifts, etc. on there. Better than going to real stores and suffering having to walk all over and dealing with the public!
Just ordered two pantry moth traps and we'll see how that works. So far we only see a few a day. It's amazing how we can never see where they come from. Like I said before, someday we'll get to the cabinets when we're not so lazy.
Patti got a pack of Dr. Killigan's moth traps and set them out tonight. They are sucking up moths like all get out. I looked in one it it had 13 moths trapped. I guess they are all males but they will stop the dynasty.
There is not a single live moth in sight this morning. The trap in the pantry has so many moths stuck in it that they are impossible to count. Good work, Dr. Killigan.
Ordered!
Got us 2 traps a few weeks ago and cleaned out a bunch of stuff in the pantry. It's amazing where those little critters can crawl into. Down to only seeing a few flying around ever since. I think there's an end in sight. Our trap's brand name is Pro-Pest Pantry Moth and Beetle Trap.
Quote from: Den Socling on March 02, 2017, 08:34:13 AM
There is not a single live moth in sight this morning. The trap in the pantry has so many moths stuck in it that they are impossible to count. Good work, Dr. Killigan.
I guess it is time for you to celebrate with a mothless Molson ( say that 3 times fast ). You better start taking vitamins to replace all the moth protein your diet will be lacking. ;D ;D
I tried doing what you sssssssssaid sssssssssaying it 3 timessssssssss and now my keyboard isssss ssssssticky.
That's pretty funny. I have had a couple Molson's tonight and I sure can't say it three times fast! :D
The way I understand it, these traps are supposed to attract male moths. Either we had a major shortage of lady moths or our lady moths were "do-funnies" (my father's term). :D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10317/moth_traps.gif?easyrotate_cache=1488726614)
Checked a trap tonight and there is a stink bug stuck in there. Do they eat insects or something?
Not that I know of, but they're stupid enough to blunder into a trap of water. They do a lot of damage to fruit and vegetables, so I've assumed that's their food of choice.
Put bay leaves all over and in boxes of grains, cereal, flour, whatever. No gremlins