Carpet Beetles and Their Control

CARPET BEETLES, or so-called buffalo moths, are common household pests usually associated in their destructive work with clothes moths. Ordinarily they are not so destructive as clothes moths, because they reproduce only once a year, and then not so abundantly.
Experienced housewives throughout the North are familiar with the stout, oval, reddish-brown, hairy grubs or larvæ of the common carpet beetle, found beneath carpets or in clothing. In southern homes, however, the longer, slender, golden-brown larva of the black carpet beetle, with its tuft of golden bristles, is more common.
All carpet-beetle larvæ feed upon fabrics or upon various articles, including upholstered furniture, containing wool, silk, hair, fur, bristles, or feathers. They even feed upon dried animal matter.
Protection against carpet beetles can be secured in tight chests and trunks by the use of the crystals of naphthalene, paradichlorobenzene, or camphor, or by the fumigants carbon disulphid and carbon tetrachloride Where infestation is general throughout a house or is serious in closets, it may be advisable to fumigate with hydrocyanic-acid gas, carbon disulphid, or sulphur, but none of these fumigation methods should be employed except by a person well informed regarding them. The foregoing remedies and others, such as cold storage, red-cedar chests, heat, and the treatment of infested floor cracks, are discussed in this bulletin.
Washington, D. C.
July, 1923

CARPET BEETLES AND THEIR CONTROL.
By E. A. Back, Entomologist in Charge of Stored-Product Insect Investigations, Bureau of Entomology .
CONTENTS.
CARPET BEETLES OR BUFFALO MOTHS.