Clothing Moth Traps

Backstory... I'm a beekeeper. We have a stand up freezer in our basement and periodically we will store frames in the freezer to kill off any thing that may be living in the comb after the bees have been removed from it. Things like wax moths and hive beetles. (Feel free to google "wax moth damage to bee frames" or "hive beetle damage to bee frames" and see what kind of damage they can do). At the end of the season last year, I had a surplus of frames we pulled out of hives and we needed to cycle them through the freezer before we put them in sealed totes for storage until next season. I entrusted my husband to take care of this and here we are. He cycled the frames through the freezer but failed to put the lid back on the totes. About a month or 2 later, we started seeing moths upstairs in the house. After killing a few, I went downstairs to the basement and lo and behold, I had discovered that husband didn't put the lids back on the totes and now all the frames were infested with wax moths. GROSS. After removing the totes to outside (it was still relatively cold at night and cold enough to kill whatever was on the frames), we purchased a bug zapper to hang in our basement. That thing was useless. It zapped more dust than anything and didn't even so much as kill any bugs that were drawn to it. This bug zapper is no longer listed for sale on Amazon because there were so many complaints on it. That seller refunded me the price paid for the bug zapper and it wasn't until then that I read a review where it literally set someone's house on fire. We took to swatting what all we could find and our cats helped out by catching the moths and then killing them by playing with them. We thought were were good as we hadn't seen any moths in a while. Nope. Only recently we started seeing a bunch more moths upstairs. I researched moth traps and purchased Dr Killigans and hung one up in the basement once it arrived. Within mere hours.... this trap had caught a dozen or so moths. We hung up another trap in the basement and it's caught a bunch too. I've attached photos and a quick video of the evidence at how well these work. Will definitely buy again as I feel we haven't gotten to the end of these little buggers being in our basement. Lesson learned. Don't entrust your husband to follow through with anything or do the task right the first time. Kudos to the maker for their Dad jokes too. "Dr Kill-again" and "killing them softly."

I’ve used these for years to keep moths from ruining my clothes. They work very well. It’s important, too, to dry clean your wool items before you store them for the off season. This will cut down on moth damage as they feast off the dirt on the wool. These easy to use forms help make sure you don’t wind up with moth holes.

Make sure you find all the moths hiding places! I set some in the closets in my home and was still seeing moths. Less moths, yes. There were a bunch that were lured to their sticky doom. I realized I hadn't put them in all the places they were hiding. Once I figured out where else the moths were coming from I placed a few more traps and I haven't seen a moth in weeks.

My tale of moth woe: I had 2 cotton tops in the basement that I’d brought upstairs to try on and decide if I was keeping them or donating them. Unbeknownst to me, they were harboring moths or larvae, and soon the moths were multiplying. Gross but true: I discovered the problem when I saw a whole bunch of tiny silvery winged bugs on the carpeted cat tree. They shimmered as they moved. After identifying them I learned that their eggs were likely laid there by their parents who knew the babies would need to eat not just the carpet fibers but also the microscopic pet dander. That surprised me because I regularly vacuum the tree, and had recently sprayed it down with bleach too. I vacuumed it again. Anyway, they started moving elsewhere too and I had to get serious. When I read about these moths one factoid of interest is that it’s not the moths that do the fabric damage, but the larvae who consume it while tiny. Adult clothes moths do not feed because they have underdeveloped mouthparts. Their sole purpose is to mate and lay eggs before dying (usually within 1–2 weeks). They survive only on energy stored from their larval stage. So the ones you can see are less of an issue than the ones you can’t see. And your goal is to get the ones you can see to not mate. Hence, these traps which draw the males in with their seductive scent (odorless to us) ideally keeping the boys busy, singing like fake sirens on the rocks. The fellows fly in looking for love… and then get stuck in the glue. Presumably there’s a bunch of sexually frustrated lady moths out there too, wondering where the boys are. So far, so good. I started with one pack of 6, and when I saw the tiny corpses and realized how many we had, I got another. The moths seem to be loose in the house (where I’m catching them, especially in that cat tree) and not (thankfully) in the closets. It’s unbelievable how many turn up in the traps and as soon as the surface area seems overcrowded, I’ll be getting more. Using new ones also will allow me to see if any are still present. (It’s impossible to count the many bodies in each trap to keep score.) I think this is going to be a long term process but I’ll be patient. I rarely see any flittering around now, though some could be hatching elsewhere. Btw, you can use extreme heat or cold to kill both adults and larvae. Look it up. I can’t get the cat tree (nor all my household fabrics) into bags and into high heat for 3 days, nor fit it in the freezer. I’m going to let the traps work their magic a few months and pray the attrition is enough. If the body count is any indication, given time, these traps will win the war.

والله زي قلته ولا يصيد شي 🥺💔💔

they work they really work

Excellent results. After one month we have trapped 24 moths.

Seems to be working well

not effective and over priced…