How to Use Meal Moth Traps to Rid Your Home of Meal Moths
While the traps themselves, usually pheremone-based, will do little to rid your home of these pantry pests, they do serve as excellent monitors to aid you in locating the areas where meal moths are a problem. The only sure way of elimination is to eliminate all possible food sources. Even insecticides are limited in their success if there is still a food source present for the moths and their larvae. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
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Place Indian meal moth traps in the areas of your home where you have noticed the tiny, bronze tipped moths, or signs of the larva in foodstuffs. Signs include the white, grub-like larvae themselves, as well as clumps of grains, herbs, teas or cereals held together by fine webbing.
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Monitor the number of moths trapped. For every moth -- usually male -- caught, there are as many as eight still breeding in the home.
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Clean out the infested area. Use a vacuum or broom to get up any spilled food, paying special attention to cracks and crevices. Discard open food that is infested outside the home. Simple soap and water or even just a damp rag is enough to remove dirt and debris that may be housing the critters.
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Transfer food from paper, thin plastic or cardboard packaging into sturdy glass or hard plastic containers with tightly sealing lids.
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Keep traps up to continue to monitor the area for at least a month. This helps you determine if you have rid your home of the pests.
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Tips & Warnings
Meal moths and their larva cannot withstand dramatic temperature changes, so dropping infested food into the freezer for a few days, and then bringing it back to room temperature and freezing again is an effective method of killing them.
Don't leave food out anywhere, they WILL find it.
References
- Photo Credit Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images
