Ruud Kleinpaste: Home invading destructive so-and-sos

Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

Guess what – last week I found my first gorgeous Tineola bisselliella moths of the season.

A pretty yellow-brown, tiny moth with an orange hairdo. I remember this critter from the Netherlands all those years ago, and it has reached New Zealand not terribly long ago, as far as I can see.

This cosmopolitan moth is becoming more and more common in the Christchurch region. Although it’s spreading to a few New Zealand Centres: Wellington, Napier and who knows where else.

This attractive moth has a very descriptive vernacular name: Webbing Clothes Moth.

Its larvae (also known as caterpillars) chew on woollen materials, as well as taxidermied skins and feathers.

From now on they’ll be on the wing at my place, laying eggs in our woollen rugs and woollen carpets, chewing holes in all those natural products that keep us warm.

It really hacks me off if I find them in my taxidermied pheasant or kiwi. They also destroy feathers!

But when Julie finds evidence in her fancy clothes cupboard, I will be severely questioned “when is the last time you sprayed their favourite habitat?”

“Do something!”

And off I go to my mates at Safeworx, a company that stocks the most effective Pyrethroid insecticide aerosols on the planet – I should know, because in the days when I was a real entomologist (and working for the Ministry of Agriculture) we developed these insecticides for aircraft quarantine reasons, so that no nasty interlopers would enter Aotearoa: creatures such as Mosquitoes that transmit human diseases, Malaria, Dengue, Ross River Virus etc, etc.

This was a long time ago: the nineteen eighties!

Spraying the walls, ceiling and floor of Aircraft holds to measure the efficacy of the Synthetic pyrethroid on flies, mosquitoes, moths, and beetles…

Those were the fun days!

Ask the folks at Safeworx for a few aerosol cans of the residual aircraft hold spray – I’m sure they’ll find the right one.

Spray the surfaces where the damage is found; aim at a distance of around 60 centimetres and move over the woollen materials in a brisk tempo. The spray dries relatively fast and will be killing insects for at least 8 weeks (and much longer if the treated areas are out of direct sunlight).

This spray formulation works very well on most insect species and its residual activity is suitably long.

If you have trouble with house borer (another cosmopolitan pest that causes damage in New Zealand), a quick spray over the timber, furniture and wooden antiques will knock the borer beetles out as they emerge from their timber “homes” where they developed over the past year or so.

Timing is everything! The beetles usually emerge early December to mate and lay eggs, if you spray the infested timber in the last week of November the beetles will not survive this part of their life cycle.

It’s worth a try.

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