Carpet beetles

mutley74

Apodemus said:

Even if you have no carpets, your house will accumulate other material that they can feed on, in undisturbed corners that the hoover seldom reaches.  You may also have birds' nests in your eaves or the odd old mouse nest under the floorboards, which is the carpet beetle's natural habitat.

Yeah  understand. My ground floor is concrete floor and no space under that. 

mutley74

rach_k said:

We had lots of them when we moved into this house.  The 'woolly bear' larvae seem to live in the fluff that gets down between the floor boards.  They also like the airing cupboard.  

The first year, they were everywhere.  I thought I was having some kind of eye problem at first as I kept seeing black specks whizz across the room!  I used diatomaceous earth - just liberally sprinkled it around the skirting boards of the affected rooms and also brushed it down between the floor boards.  It was a dusty job (at least there are plenty of masks around nowadays!) but it did work and diatomaceous earth is safe for kids and pets once it's settled. 

We still get a few here and there - now is the right time for them to appear as adults and fly up to the windows to get out - so I just squash any larvae and free any adults, but it's at a liveable level.  I could probably re-do the DE (it's long since been hoovered up) to get rid of them completely, but I'll probably only bother if it gets worse.  

Where does one get diatomaceous earth from? never heard of it and Wilko doesnt sell much inspect and pest repellent when i was there last week. 
Where is the best place to find larvae ? Not really seen any yet.

rach_k

mutley74 said:

rach_k said:

We had lots of them when we moved into this house.  The 'woolly bear' larvae seem to live in the fluff that gets down between the floor boards.  They also like the airing cupboard.  

The first year, they were everywhere.  I thought I was having some kind of eye problem at first as I kept seeing black specks whizz across the room!  I used diatomaceous earth - just liberally sprinkled it around the skirting boards of the affected rooms and also brushed it down between the floor boards.  It was a dusty job (at least there are plenty of masks around nowadays!) but it did work and diatomaceous earth is safe for kids and pets once it's settled. 

We still get a few here and there - now is the right time for them to appear as adults and fly up to the windows to get out - so I just squash any larvae and free any adults, but it's at a liveable level.  I could probably re-do the DE (it's long since been hoovered up) to get rid of them completely, but I'll probably only bother if it gets worse.  

Where does one get diatomaceous earth from? never heard of it and Wilko doesnt sell much inspect and pest repellent when i was there last week. 
Where is the best place to find larvae ? Not really seen any yet.

It's easy to get online - eBay, Amazon etc.  A little goes a long way as it's a very fine powder.

The larvae will be wherever the eggs have been laid and then spreading outwards.  I occasionally find them crawling up walls, presumably having come up from the floorboards/skirting, and in a dusty old cupboard we rarely use.  Sometimes, you find them or their old cast-off skin in fabrics that haven't been disturbed for ages e.g. old cotton towels.