Professional Carpet Beetle Treatments
/If you find holes in your clothes or curtains, or chewed areas of your carpets or rugs, it could be due to carpet beetles. But it could also be due to clothes moths, silverfish or even cockroaches, so you need to do a bit of detective work to determine the culprit…
What are carpet beetles?
There are two main types of carpet beetle; black carpet beetles and variegated carpet beetles. They are small beetles normally, variegated carpet beetles about 2-3mm in size, with black carpet beetles 3-5mm long.
It’s the beetle larvae which do all the damage. They look like hairy beetles have the common name – “woolly bears”.
The carpet beetle larvae can take 9 months to develop before it’s ready to build a cocoon to develop into an adult.
Variegated carpet beetle adult (up to 3mm long)
with hairy larva - “woolley bear”.
Black carpet beetle adult (Up to 6mm long)
What do carpet beetles eat?
The carpet beetle larvae eat all types of animal fibres not just woollen carpets, rugs and clothes, but also fur, silk, felt, feathers and leather. They don’t eat synthetic materials and won’t normally eat cotton.
They like to live in dark, undisturbed places, which is why they often damage carpet under heavy furniture.
The adult beetles prefer to live outside feeding on flowers. You can often see the adult beetles on window sills. These are new adults that have emerged from the cocoons inside your home trying to get out and are a sure sign you have an infestation somewhere in your home.
How to get rid of carpet beetles?
To successfully deal with a carpet beetle problem it’s important to find the site of the infestation. This takes a bit of detective work… it could be in a dark corner of a room, but it may also be in the roof void or sub-floor where the beetles may be feeding on a dead animal. It can be a bit tricky to find the source infestation and sometimes it can be a bit gross (!), which is why most people will call a professional pest manager.
(Note: Sometimes they can infest wool roof insulation!)
Carpet beetle spray
At Gold Coast Pest Services our carpet beetle treatment is a 3 stage process (and we need your help with stages 1 & 2):
Stage 1: Inspection. Firstly, we must find the source of the infestation and if there are any dead animals involved, we will remove them from the roof void or sub-floor.
Stage 2: Any infested clothes will also need to be either thrown out or treated. As the beetles, larvae and especially the eggs can be hard to spot, undamaged clothes should be placed in sealed plastic bags and placed in the sun for several hours to kill any beetles present. The clothes should then be washed.
Stage 3: We will spray the carpets in infested rooms with a suitable odourless insecticide. This will kill any eggs, larvae or adult beetles present and leave behind an invisible residue which will prevent any further infestation for several months. Depending on the situation, we may also need to treat the carpets and wardrobes in other rooms, even if no damage is visible, as there may already be eggs present. Once the treatment is dry, it is safe for the family and pets to re-entry to the rooms and for clothes to be returned to cupboards.
How to prevent carpet beetles returning?
Once you home is clear of carpet beetles, the home can only be infested if adult beetles re-enter from outside.
Here are our simple tips to reduce the chances of a carpet beetle infestation in the future:
Make sure there are well-fitted screens on windows and doors
Don’t plant flowers (which could attract adult beetles) near windows and doors
Make sure you vacuum all those hard-to-reach places when cleaning
Put winter woollens away in storage each spring.
