Carpet beetles, much like Carpet Moths (we will cover these in a later blog post), love to feed on your carpets as the name suggests. But that's not all they can destroy! They will happily munch away on woollen clothing, taxidermy, old birds nests, accumulations of pet hairs under floorboards, fur coats and sometimes upholstery!
It's not the actual adult beetle that does the damage though. It's the larval stage that's doing all the damage.
The larvae are very distinctive, they even have a nickname with us pest control experts. We call them Wooly Bears!
This is mainly because one of their favourite foods is wool (or any other natural product that contains keratin), and they have strange hairs that stick out all over their soft white bodies, hence the Bear tag.
The adults are quite distinctive also, they have a similar round body to Ladybird
Beetles, but its not shiny like Ladybirds, its more like a moths wing coating, dull and slightly flakey. They also have an irregular mottled pattern of white, brown and yellow on their backs.
You may have seen the larvae on floors and you may see the adults on window sills from May to August, this is because the adults want to get outside to mate and feed on pollen. The adults only live for a couple of weeks, before starting the life cycle off again for next year.
The larvae hatch from eggs in the spring and early summer, and they begin to search for food, usually your carpets!!!!
You may not notice the damage they have done for quite a while as they like to eat the carpet that's hidden away from light, such as under your sofa or behind TV units.
Quite often customers phone us in shock when they have a spring clean!
They get the vacuum cleaner under all those hard to get to places, and soon discover that as well as the dust, the carpet gets sucked up by the vacuum cleaner as well! The carpet can sometimes look perfect up until this point, this is because the carpet Beetle larvae love to nibble away at the strand of fibre that loops through the mesh at the base of the carpet, leaving no evidence from above!!!!
WHAT WE CAN DO AGAINST CARPET BEETLE INFESTATION.
We have a very successful treatment. In fact, as long as you follow our preparation list before we do the treatment, it will work 100% of the time.
We use a residual insecticide (this means it stays in the carpets for many weeks, until it is vacuumed, YOU MUST NOT VACUUM FOR 3 WEEKS!!!!), the carpet beetle insecticide also usually contains an I.G.R. or Insect Growth Regulator, this stops the reproductive process from functioning properly, hence, like our company tagline, breaks the cycle!( PEST INTERCEPTORS Breaking the Cycle.)
Please be aware that you can get re-infested though, this is just bad luck i'm afraid, it rarely happens, but it can on rare occasions.