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Carpet Beetles – What’s Eating Your Carpets?

Anthrenus verbasci The Varied Carpet Beetle

Carpet Beetles – What’s Eating Your Carpets? The Varied Carpet Beetle (Anthrenus verbasci) is a fairly new pest to the north of Great Britain having been largely confined to the balmy southern climate but now pest controllers in Lancashire, Cheshire and Manchester are increasingly having to deal with this insect pest._
The carpet beetle is a very distinctive, easily recognised beetle that can be a serious problem in the house. It feeds on natural fibres and can eat anything of natural origin, woolen carpets, furniture} and clothing.
The larvae are known as a woolly bear, a common name it shares with the larvae of Pyrrharctia isabella or the Isabella Tiger moth.

The varied carpet beetle was the very first insect to be identified to have a circadian and an annual cycle and to date remains a classic example of circannual cycles in insects.

The Wooly Bear

The larval form of A. verbasci are roughly 4-5 mm in length. The body has a pattern of alternating light- and dark-brown stripes. The body is usually wider at the back than at the front and has 3 pairs of hair tufts on its rear abdomen that can be used for self-defence

Adult A. verbasci range from 1.7 to 3.5 mm in length. Their dorsal surface has scales of two colours, whitish and yellowish-brown. White scales are concentrated along the lateral margins of the pronotum. In addition, their antennae are 11-segmented with a club of 3 segments
_A Verbasci has a very unusual life cycle for an insect, the development from larvae to adult can take anything from 1-3 years, according to the environment in which it finds itself.
Larvae hatch from eggs in the spring, very often they are associated with birds’ nests or around stored natural fabrics Larvae eat natural fibres throughout their larval stage, eventually emerging as an adult. Adults emerge between April and early August, and feed on pollen.
These insect pests cause both physical damage by their larvae eating fabrics and psychological damage from the vast numbers of these pests which can emerge into homes.
When attempting to deal with these pests it is important to lookout for the presence of birds’ nests and remove any nests and feathers etc from the infested before treating with an appropriate insecticide..
It is important to note that in the U.K. legislation affects the removal of birds’ nest, including sparrows and starlings which are two of the common birds which are associated with A.verbasci so professional advice should be sought to avoid [breaking the law.

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The Joint Is Jumpin’ – The Story Of The Flea (Ken Chadwick)

The Joint Is Jumpin’ – The Story Of The Flea -Contrary to popular opinion cat & dog fleas do not live on their chosen animal, they merely jump onto their host at feeding time, and dinner for a flea of course is blood.

In nature the fleas live and breed in the nest of animal they feed on, in reality of course in a modern house the ‘nest’ becomes the carpets, rugs and soft furnishings.

: Image via Wikipedia

Flea (Ctenocephalides felis & canis) infestations are becoming much more prevalent in recent years, centrally heated homes provide an ideal environment for the life cycle of the insect, which can be completed in as little as 16 days.

The increased presence of urban foxes in many towns and cities may be responsible for the increased number of flea infestations as foxes always carry a generous population to share with the neighbourhood cats and dogs.

The well fed flea lays its eggs in the nesting material, carpets in a modern dwelling, which hatch out into larvae which crawl away from light and hence are to be found deep in the pile. In the egg and larval stage they are also pretty resistant to insecticide which is why it is rarely possible to cure a flea infestation with one treatment.

The larvae eat the blood rich droppings of the adult flea before pupating to emerge as a young, hungry flea

Human beings do not taste especially nice to fleas and our blood is not of sufficient quality for them to breed, but in the absence of a cat or a dog we will do!

In the absence of a host the immature flea can go into a dormant state without feeding for up to a year or more and then revive within seconds on feeling the vibration from the footfall of a potential meal. For this reason properties which have been empty for a while often provide a little surprise for the new owners.

Often the family holiday is the time when people notice they have a flea problem, having put the family pet in kennels for a couple of weeks the resident flea population is starving and eager to greet them on their return.

There is however a dangerous side to fleas, we all know they were responsible for transmission of plague and thankfully we don’t have that to contend with anymore but they can set off serious skin irritations in susceptible people including dermatitis.

They also have a more sinister side. The flea is an intermediate host for tapeworm.

When the flea dines on an animal infected with tapeworm it can ingest the worm eggs which pass into its guts. These infected fleas can then be ingested by a cat or dog during self-grooming and the worms infect the new host.

Worse still it is easy for a human baby or toddler to accidentally ingest these fleas when crawling on flea infested carpets.

In order to clear a flea infestation it will be necessary to treat both the animal and the carpets and soft furnishings of the property and outdoor areas where the animal may frequently visit. A professional pest controller will often use both an insecticide and a growth retardant hormone to interfere with the flea life-cycle. The cat or dog will need to be treated at the same time by a veterinary surgeon.

Trafford and Manchester Pest Control

Carpet Beetles – What’s Eating Your Carpets?

The Joint Is Jumpin’ – The Story Of The Flea

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