indian meal moth problem

I have a problem with indian meal moths. I contacted a local pest control company and was told to freeze all my dry foodstuffs, flour, seeds, crackers, cake mixes etc. which I did. For 10 days. I have returned all of my dried goods into cupboard and pantry. I also purchase the pheremone traps and have approximately 10 moths in each trap. I have also noticed a few of the worms crawling on my ceiling maybe 2-3 over the span of one week. Do you think I still have an active infestation or is this just the residual of the life cycle of this situation and will it take a few weeks etc to stop seeing moths flying around. I notice about 2-3 each night. Your earliest response would be appreciated as this is driving me crazy.

If you read through our MOTH CONTROL article, you'll learn the larvae don't travel much until they've fed well. Seeing some crawling around on your ceiling leads me to believe they are hatching from eggs not on the food your froze. In other words, I'm pretty sure there is another population of them living somewhere in the home. You see, even though they could survive the freezing temps, chances are you would have seen something when handling any of these "frozen" items in the days since they've been out in the open. Since this hasn't happened, I suspect there is another food source still not identifed.

Additionally, the pupae stage is most definitely still around in the home, away from the food and the "likely" locations. As our article explains, this stage is strong and typically in locations away from food and where the larvae molts into the adult moth.

Now if you're seeing larvae crawling then the only way to know for sure they'll die would be if where you're seeing them where it has been treated. If this part of the ceiling has with sprayed with something like the BAYGON or PT PHANTOM AEROSOL, these larvae will die for sure and not be able to morph into adults. But if your service company didn't treat these areas, chances are increased for the problem to persist.

Lastly, we always recommend throwing away all the food which is suspect of harboring any activity. Think about it: even if the larvae did all die, are you comfortable feeding dead insects to your family? Probably not. Throwing away the contaminated food is almost always the best way to proceed in this process of elimination. Next, treating the vacated cupboards the way our article details is required along with the surrounding rooms to make sure any migrating larvae can't establish themselves. If you haven't had this type of complete treatment done I'm sure the problem will persist indefintely. And yes, the traps do help cut down on the males flying around but remember, it only takes one of them to impregnate a female so relying on the traps alone won't solve the problem.

If you'd like to see any of the products mentioned above, just click on them where they appear in the post or follow these direct links:

http://www.indianmealmoths.com/meal-moth-control

http://www.bugspray.com/item/invader_hpx.html

http://www.bugspray.com/item/phantom_aerosol.html

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