Who is fruit moth? Description of the insect and control measures

If larvae resembling small worms are wound up in dried fruit, and the product itself is crumbling before our eyes, this means that fruit moth tried. You can’t procrastinate: you need to physically eliminate the pest, process the storage place and take measures to reduce the risk of re-infection by an uninvited guest.

Description of Fruit Moth

Fruit moth is a small and unremarkable butterfly: its body is about 1 cm long, and there are horizontal stripes on the gray wings and body, slightly different from the main color. It is easier to notice the pest with the onset of the evening, because the insect has a nocturnal lifestyle. In the dark, active years begin, while in the daytime the insect prefers to hide in secluded corners, and you can see the fruit striped moth only by chance, for example, by opening the cabinet with supplies where it hid.

Insect life is short: it lasts an average of 2-14 days. The female dies after laying eggs in food. Soon, voracious larvae hatch from the masonry, which harm food. Adult individuals do not feed, therefore, they are dangerous only as continuers of offspring.

Harm

The harm of fruit moths lies in the use of foodstuffs as food sources for their larvae; therefore, they lay their eggs in jars, boxes with supplies in kitchens, in pantries and other storage rooms. Emerging larvae begin to eat intensely, gnawing the food available to them. Especially often fruit lives dried fruit mothbut larvae can also eat nuts and others.

In addition to causing mechanical damage to products, the fruit moth larvae leave chitinous scales discharged after the linings and toxic waste products in dried fruits. They are dangerous to human health, because when they enter the digestive system they cause poisoning.

How does fruit moth enter a house?

Fruit moths can even appear in a clean house where no other harmful insects live. There are several ways to enter the home from outside, for example:

through an open door, window or window, the butterfly flies into the premises in the warm season;
through the ventilation system;
when buying infected products: if you buy dried fruits with larvae, then the worms will infect new supplies in the closet, and then turn into adult butterflies that continue to breed in the house.

Therefore, everyone can face the problem of damage to dried fruits by insect larvae. The risk is especially great in the warm season.

Pest Control Methods

To save supplies, you need to know how to get rid of fruit moths in the house. The fight against insects is not easy, because you can not use the most effective means - chemical insecticides. They are toxic, therefore the processing of food products with pesticides is strictly prohibited: this can cause severe poisoning in humans.

Therefore, it remains to use harmless means. To reduce the number of adult fruit moths in the house and to prevent them from laying eggs, traps and adhesive tapes designed to destroy flying insects will help.They should be placed near the place of storage of dried fruits, for example, near a cabinet or pantry.

But such tools do not guarantee safety from the pest.

First steps

As soon as the larvae were noticed in the products, you need to immediately take measures so that the remaining food reserves are not affected:

Everything that turned out to be infected with pests needs to be thrown out without regret, because such dried fruits are unsuitable and even dangerous for eating.
It is necessary to process the cans in which the products were stored with a solution of vinegar.
Shelves and cabinet walls with affected dried fruits are also treated with vinegar essence. If eggs or larvae remain there (they may be located in crevices and inaccessible places), they will infect new products that they put in the cabinet.

A thorough treatment with vinegar essence should be carried out with gloves so as not to get a chemical burn of the skin of the hands. It is better to leave vinegar on the surfaces for up to half an hour to get a guarantee of the complete destruction of the pest residues. The substance has an unpleasant odor, so you need to leave the cabinet to ventilate with the window open until excess odors disappear.

Folk remedies

In the entire history of the struggle of a person with a pest, folk remedies for fruit moth. They are simple, accessible to use and, most importantly, safe for health. After all, these are natural products whose smell is unacceptable to most insects.

Using folk remedies in pest control, it must be remembered that insects gradually develop immunity. Therefore, they should be changed periodically: so the result will be better, and dried fruits will remain intact.

Effective against fruit moths:

Lavender. The grass has a strong aroma that all moths cannot tolerate, including fruit moths. Therefore, fabric bags with dried lavender have long been put in wardrobes to protect clothes and food from this insect. Alternatively, you can use dried mint and lemon balm, which also have a rich smell.
Bay leaf. A few leaves laid in the closet will scare away the pest. But the effectiveness of laurel is lower than lavender.
Citrus zest. It is saturated with essential oils, also smelling strongly. Aromatic substances quickly disappear, so the crusts must be constantly replaced with new ones.

All types of pelargonium (geraniums) contain a large amount of essential oils, which creates unfavorable conditions for the insect.

Prevention

To reduce the risk of fruit moths in the house, it is recommended to perform the following actions:

Store food in tightly closed jars so that the butterfly cannot get in there.
Check supplies regularly.
About once a month in the warm season, wipe the cabinet inside with a solution of vinegar essence.
Physically destroy the mole that flew into the house.

If you do not follow these simple rules, then you can skip the time of infection. The pest will be detected only after it spoils an impressive amount of dried fruit.

Fruit moth is a pest of human food, which prefers dried fruits. She infects them and turns them into dust. But folk remedies, together with preventive measures, can prevent the activity of moths and save products from insects.