Freezer is an enormous undertaking. There are other approaches you should consider. Carpet beetle larvae don't eat much. You have time on your side. Tom Parker -----Original Message----- From: Alex Roach <[email protected]> To: nhcoll-l <[email protected]>; pestlist <[email protected]> Cc: Alex.Drew <[email protected]>; Christopher.Wilson <[email protected]> Sent: Tue, Nov 20, 2018 4:56 pm Subject: Re: [pestlist] Dermestid help
Hi TonyaThe reason for the large numbers of adults is that they emerge at this time of year here (i.e. September-November). The collections that you mentioned are highly attractive to carpet beetles, so while some beetles may be entering from other areas, it is more likely that you have several infested specimens.Freezing the infested material is a good approach. You could use your freezer, hire a trailer freezer if the collection is bigger than your current freezer, or use low oxygen (either individually bagging specimens or large flexible chambers). Due to the high susceptibility of the mammal and bird specimens it may be better to store them in barrier film bags, as this makes them ‘invisible’ to the bugs.You have some of these facilities in Canberra (e.g. freezers at the AWM and the NGA), or I can send you contact details for Australian suppliers.Best wishesAlex RoachModified Atmospheres0414 663 472 On Tue, 20 Nov 2018 at 12:04 am, 'bugman22' via Museumpests <[email protected]> wrote: Tonya - Have you considered Vapona pest strips hung in the vaults at a rate of one strip/1,000 cu ft? After one month, you can remove them. Tom Parker -----Original Message----- From: Tonya.Haff <[email protected]> To: nhcoll-l <[email protected]>; pestlist <[email protected]> Cc: Alex.Drew <[email protected]>; Christopher.Wilson <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, Nov 18, 2018 11:12 pm Subject: [pestlist] Dermestid help Hi all, We just discovered that we have a dermestid (variegated carpet beetle) infestation here. Very bad news, as we’ve been really successful at keeping our vaults clean until now. At any rate, I just found a few hundred adults on the floor of our bone vault – dead and dying. I’m sure they are eating some residual material on our dingo skulls, which were not cleaned properly before storing (this is an historical problem). In addition, we’ve found a few (~20) in our mammal (skin and skulls) vault, and a very few (~10) in our bird vault. I’m not sure what the cause of this outbreak is, other than nice warm weather. In the bird and mammal vaults they are concentrated near the door cracks to the emergency exists (yes this is probably a design flaw). My colleagues are hopeful they have just come in to investigate and have died, but my instinct tells me they may have been eating specimens and are now trying to leave. Ideally we want them gone completely from everywhere, though I know this is easier said than done. For the bone vault, we can freeze the contents of the room, clean/fumigate the room, and then put the material back in. But the mammal and bird collections are larger and more delicate and so this is not so easy, and perhaps not warranted, given the limited number of dermestids we’ve found there. I’m wondering if any of you could recommend solutions for how to tackle this problem? Would placing pheromone traps to localise the problem and then freezing/fumigating specific cabinets be sufficient, and how would we know if it’s not? Anyway, any thoughts or suggestions would be very welcome. Cheers, Tonya --------------------------------------------------------- Dr Tonya Haff Collections Manager Australian National Wildlife Collection National Research Collections Australia, CSIRO Canberra, Australia Phone: (+61) 02 62421566 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Museumpests" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/pestlist. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pestlist/cac7915bb135421eb5858865e6ce2d80%40exch3-mel.nexus.csiro.au. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Museumpests" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/pestlist. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pestlist/1190560710.2810638.1542632679844%40mail.yahoo.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Alex RoachDirectorModified AtmospheresM: 0414 663 472ABN: 66 164 577 557-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Museumpests" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/pestlist. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pestlist/CAOt7HWChBMPoaNuVpCoj%3DGjVN03KBPWeZQZjBC28w7sh0B9KBQ%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Museumpests" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/pestlist. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pestlist/1826306894.3805365.1542757888729%40mail.yahoo.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
