They have a desire to delve into your wardrobe or creep on your carpets. With longer days and warmer weather, now is the time we see a real boom in moths around the home. It's not the adults that eat their way through tasty woolly treats but the larvae. The adult moths have a particular love for fabric that may have been left alone for a short period of time and fabric that has perspiration or food stains present. The larvae feast on this to get the vitamins they need to grow.
What can you do to prevent them and how to spot them
1. Spring clean - carry out a deep clean on your home. Empty wardrobes and drawers, vacuum inside on top and underneath. Get in to all the nooks and crannies, this is perfect egg laying territory! You need to move furniture out, get right behind those wardrobes, beds and chests of drawers. Get vacuuming around every edge of every room, wash the curtains. change the bed linen in the spare room.
2. Remove last seasons clothes from your wardrobe, wash and dry them. Put all your winter clothes away in sealed airtight bags during the Spring. Undisturbed, woolly clothes are a moth larvae's dream location! They will feed on any sweat, food stains and skin cells (it's their slap up meal!).
3. Check clothes and soft furnishings for damage. Do you have any tell tale signs? Tunnels or trenches in fabrics? Holes in carpets at the edge of the room in a dark corner rarely hoovered?
How to treat the problem?
1. If you forget to check for the tell tale signs of moths, you can buy some handy tools on the high street for checking moth numbers. Grab a moth box trap, put them in high risk areas (wardrobes/behind the back of the sofa etc) and wait for the male moths to be attracted to the pheromone. This way, you can track if you have a problem, how serious it is and if it's getting worse.
2. If you find you do have an infestation, don't panic! Perform a deep clean, monitor the situation and then call a professional. Moth treatments at Barnard Pest Control are carried out with a residual spray, throughout the whole house with particular concentration on the effected areas. We will then arrange 2 follow up visits to respray and check progress to make sure the moths have been eradicated.