Continuing from Wednesday…

On the inside of your home, carpet beetles can be found invading a variety of different substances.  In the kitchen you could find them inside of cake mixes, cereals, grain, seeds, flour, powdered milk, or dog and cat foods.  You can also find carpet beetles eating fur, wool, feathers, silk, velvet, hair, leather, book bindings, dead insects, cotton, linens, and rayon inside your house.  Linens that are stained with food particles are a particularly yummy treat for carpet beetles. You may also experience a carpet beetle explosion in your attic or eaves if you have any wasp nests as carpet beetles are attracted to the nests with or without the wasps inside. Bird and rodent nests that are abandoned, or those with dead and decaying animals remaining, will also attract these scavengers in droves.

Bed bugs will typically hang out where they can obtain an easy blood meal.  You will usually find them within about 10 feet of the bed, hiding in all sorts of locations, not just the bed, despite their name.  Being that they are hitchhikers, it is easy to take a bed bug or eggs with you from room to room, or furniture piece to furniture piece.

With carpet beetles, the larvae stage is when you will see serious damage to items in your home.  A female carpenter beetle can lay up to 100 eggs which takes approximately 8 to 15 days to hatch when the weather is warm.  The larvae goes through several life stages, is hard to detect, and eats constantly.  Depending on the temperature, the larval stage feeding can last from 60 days to up to a year.  Carpet beetle larvae are often found in the dust bunnies, hair, and lint that accumulate in the corners and edges within a room.

Like bed bugs, carpet beetles like to hide in dark, protected, and undisturbed areas in your home. Look for carpet beetle infestations under baseboards, in air ducts, under pianos, stored food items, wall voids, and under heavy furniture, and other places where they will be unnoticed.

As with any pest that is invading your home, you should always contact a pest control expert who is trained to provide safe and proper pesticide treatment.  Stern Environmental Group has been providing professional pest control services to Secaucus, New Jersey, the Greater New York City Metro and Connecticut Regions for over 10 years.  Give us a call today for all of your pest control needs.