No matter how hard you try to keep your apartment clean and tidy, sometimes pests invade. More often the threat comes from bedbugs and cockroaches, but have you ever heard of the leather beetle? This little parasite cannot be called harmless. He is an infrequent guest, but he brings quite a lot of trouble.
You might think that, based on the name of this insect, it feeds only on skin, but, alas, there is nothing inedible for the leather beetle. The leather beetle causes significant damage to food, clothing and furniture. These beetles love to feast on leather, furs, wool, museum exhibits, books and upholstered furniture. Such a variety of taste preferences allows skin beetles to be found both in the closet with clothes and in the utility room with bags of grain and other products. Carpet beetles are insatiable insects; if you don’t start fighting them in time, they will destroy everything around you. In addition, carpet beetles are harmful to human health. Before you start destroying the skin beetle, you need to study this parasite, what it looks like, what it likes or doesn’t like, where it lives. Simply put, you need to know the enemy by sight.
Who is he?
To recognize a leather beetle, you need to know what it looks like. So, this is a very small oval dark brown or even black insect with hard wings, no more than 3 mm in length. The larvae of leather beetles reach 2 mm in length. The body is covered with tiny hairs, and at the end of the body there is something in the form of a tail-tassel. The skin beetles move slowly, and when touched they immediately turn belly up, pretending to be dead.
These insects reproduce very quickly; the female leather beetle lays about two and a half dozen eggs at a time. In a month, a larva emerges from the egg, and in less than a year, the larva reaches the adult stage. The appearance of these beetles occurs during the warm season, namely May. But the appearance of these beetles may not be related to the time of year or the cleanliness of your apartment. You can also bring skin beetles into your apartment with books you took from an infected library, or with infected things and furniture. The adults of these insects can fly, and you can see them during the daytime, and if there is an adult beetle, there are also its eggs and larvae. And there are many of them. A clear sign of the appearance of a leather beetle in your apartment is the skin that the beetles shed, but also the damage on objects themselves.
An important distinguishing feature of the leather beetle from some other insects is its love for dryness and warmth. Most often, leather beetles live on window sills, near heating appliances, in window frames and in closets with clothes. The beetle larvae will be hidden from your eyes; they live in inaccessible places where a lot of dust accumulates, and apartment owners rarely get to this place when cleaning. For example, under the baseboard. Well, or any other darkened place. The favorite place of the leather beetle in your apartment is the upholstery of upholstered furniture.
Danger to humans
The leather beetle that has settled in your apartment would be much more harmless if it only harmed interior items and personal belongings, but, unfortunately, this beetle can also harm human health. There is no scientific evidence that leather beetles can bite humans, but these beetles still bite people.The bite of a skin beetle is impossible not to notice, it is very unpleasant and painful, pink spots remain after the bite, and in some people the wounds begin to bleed. A skin beetle bite can be contagious to humans. The beetle infects you with worms (helminths). It's not fatal, but still very unpleasant. If you are nevertheless bitten by a skin beetle, do not scratch the bite site under any circumstances; treat the wound with what you usually use to treat insect bites. You can buy an antihistamine at the pharmacy. Visit your doctor to get tested for infections.
Prevention
After removing any parasitic insects from your apartment, the main thing is to prevent a relapse, namely their reappearance. To do this, it is necessary to follow preventive measures:
- Clean carpets as often as possible and vacuum regularly.
- Put mosquito nets on the windows, this will save you from getting bugs through the window.
- Place out-of-season clothes in vacuum bags, since there are plenty of these on the market.
- Do not store old items in closets. Throw away old and unnecessary things. Once a year, go through your bed linen, not letting it sit for a long time.
- Place lavender and wormwood on shelves in cabinets and chests of drawers.
- Suitcases in which clothes and other textiles are stored must be treated with boric acid once a year.
- Ventilate closets with clothes as often as possible.
By following all the above rules, your apartment will not become so attractive to the leather beetle.
Ways to fight in an apartment
Before choosing a method of dealing with skin beetles and starting to fight them, you need to find their location. If you manage to find a cluster of leather beetle eggs, it is a huge success. Look under the carpet, under the baseboard. Most often, the larvae of the leather beetle settle there.During the period of struggle, it is necessary to vacuum the apartment several times a day. These manipulations will reduce the horde of eggs and larvae, but will not completely rid you of this scourge.
There are inexpensive methods of control, for example, freezing. In winter, you can freeze your apartment; these insects die at temperatures below 10 degrees. To be sure, repeat this procedure. You can treat furniture with steam, and soak clothes and bedding in hot water or boil. If these methods do not give you the desired results, then it is time to move on to chemicals.
- Boric acid powder. Powder preparations are rubbed in with a brush or simply sprinkled on the areas where pests have been noticed. Treat the baseboards and crevices, if any, with boric acid, and spread the powder under the carpet. Boric acid is not dangerous to humans and has no odor.
- Treating wool and fur items with a weak solution (0.005%) of the pyrethroid permethrin will save you not only from skin beetles, but also from clothes moths for a year.
- Special aerosols: Dichlorvos, Reid, Chlorophos, Raptor. To completely get rid of parasites, use the aerosol in several approaches.
- Aqueous concentrated suspensions. These products can be purchased at a specialty store. They are used in case of severe infection.
- Fumigants or tablets. For example, “Antimol”, but an adult will not take this method, but the larva will gladly swallow the tablet.
Tips for fighting carpet beetles
- If children and animals live in the apartment, then send them to stay with relatives while the beetles are being removed.
- While processing the room, close all windows and doors so that the beetles do not have the opportunity to escape.
- After treatment, leave the apartment yourself for a couple of hours.
- Ventilate the room several times.
- Repeat treatment if necessary.
In the fight against these beetles you will need a lot of patience and endurance. Insects in the apartment are a serious problem, especially if you have a small child. You need to get rid of the leather beetle immediately. And if you are unable to cope on your own, it is recommended to call special services that will destroy all the beetles and larvae in no time, and you need to ensure that a relapse does not occur.
