Moths!!! HELP!!!

[scrohan]

Another question. I buy food in bulk for all my birds and now I have moths. As annoying as they are, I just want to get rid of them. We live in Florida, so I don't want to put their food outside because of all the bugs. If I keep their food in one of those big storage containers like you keep Christmas decorations in, will the moths in the food die (if it's airtight) and then if I can kill all the ones in the house, will that take care of the problem or do I need to do something else. I hate to throw out $60 in food if I don't have to.

[judygram]

Do you have freezer space? If you do you can put the bulk of the food in the freezer and keep out what you will need to use in the next few days in the fridge. Putting the food in airtight containers will not kill them, you need to get some moth traps to catch and get rid of what you have in the house and throw out anything you have with the bugs in it.:ohmy:

[scrohan]

Thank you for this feedback. I have several kinds of food. What does the larvae look like? I just dumped the 25 lb. bag into a container and sifted through it several times and don't see anything that looks like worms or larve and actually not one moth flew out so I'm thinking it's one of the other bags of food. I will keep looking through the others...

[kiwibarb12]

I have had this problem before, and usually it shows up as cobwebby looking strands in the food - and if you have seen moths in your house, you need to check your pantry and cupboards. They get into every thing and lay eggs and breed like crazy. They appear to like carbohyrates, and can make holes in packages to get inside. I started keeping rice and pasta in the fridge because of them.

 

Since I don't like using insect sprays in the house, I bought an electric swatter on line - has a battery and I spent the best part of one year zapping bugs. They make a very satisfying pop when you get them.:evil: Anyway, do that enough, and suck them uup in the vaccum and clean out everything in yoour own food supply that they can breed in and you should eventually get rid of them. I took me the best part of a year, but I haven't seen any this year.

Actually, i kind of miss chasing moths:laugh:

[loviechick]

Ya know what it seems that it took me almost 6 months to get rid of mine but I finally did it and I'll tell you how...first I freeze all of the birds food, seeds, pellets, ANYTHING I can for 72 hours, then I leace it all in the fridge...it's sad that there's more bird food than people food in my fridge LOL

 

Secondly go to the store and buy WHOLE bay leaves...if you just put them in the bag or box of food or whatever, they won't go near the stuff to lay more eggs!

 

Thirdly lock up all your food tight! These guys get into everything it's disturbing, they got into an unopened box of cereal and chewed through the plastic to get to my honey bunches of oats, the bastards!

 

I bought tons of cheap glad tupperware, on top of the other glass ones I already had. I locked up my cereal, crackers, anything that was left open in the cabinets, same with the birds' treats and such. When they can't feed on anything they start dying off. I'd say in the past 2 months once I went and started doing this I noticed about a 75% decrease in the amount of moths and larvae!!! That and I also hung up fly strips also as another precaution I used to catch dozens onthose things...I've had the strips up for a week and only caught maybe 2-3 moths on each one, so you can definitely tell I've had a huge decrease!

 

Either way good luck!