THIS IS A MUST READ IF YOU HAVE CARPET BEETLES
Carpet beetles will lay their eggs on your pajamas and jersey knits, and jeans, plus your expensive furs, leather and feathers (anything natural) which is pretty much everything you own. This is because these knits and pj’s usually have cotton as part of the knit weave. Pajamas these days have bamboo and cotton in some of the knits.
Even though they are not going to eat polyester, if you hang or store ANYTHING you have worn for even a few minutes, you just gave them food and they will lay their eggs on that. They eat keratin, which is body sweat, dead skin cells, and the slightest food stain. You are to follow a strict regimen of never ever placing a piece of worn clothing back in a drawer or closet without cleaning first.
Believe me, once they lay eggs in your clothes, you have a big problem. You will never see them on your light colored fabrics because they are so tiny, buried in the weave of the fabric,!and the color blends together. However, in your dark fabrics, you will notice the tiniest white specks on your clothing and if you just sit down and hold the fabric in your lap, stretch the fibers apart, you may notice more tiny white white specks. These are about the size of a pin head. If they pop, a feeling or audible pop, between your thumb nails, they are viable eggs. You will rarely ever see a full grown larvae, because they are expert hiders. The larvae from eggs are so tiny and still expert hiders that you will not see them. You are more likely to find a cast off skin shedding from their molt,,which they do quite a bit while growing. These appear as a brown-orangeish speck. They crunch between your thumb nails. Everything on your clothing that looks like lint should be picked off and looked at through the magnification on your camera. Inside a clump of white fibers, you will see something dark. This must be their pupa hiding spot. After going over the outside of fabrics, look inside out at seams and corners, and especially inside pocket seams and corners. If you find what looks like lint (usually close in color to your fabric) this is where the larvae hide and pupate.
You can wear your clothes for years and never even realize you have carpet beetles larvae living in them. They won’t bother you unless you are allergic to the spines on the more mature ones. Those will sting you but you will only attribute it to something must have bit you because you wound see anything.
These things can take 220 to 630 days to go from once hatching before reaching their pupa stage. The eggs can sit as long as 60 days before hatching.
I know all of this because I battled them last year, and really thought I had eradicated everything. Everything in my house was cleaned, or dry cleaned, packed in plastic hanging bags,or vacuum bags, mothballs used, closets and drawers thoroughly cleaned, and almost every piece of clothing was thrown out and I bought all new clothes. Extremely expensive. However, I did order most online because I’m disabled and unable to shop in stores.
Fast forward to this spring. I now have a LOT of carpet beetles larvae living eggs very noticeable in my dark clothing and pajamas, which I hang in my closet rather than using drawers. They are viable eggs that pop. I am a clean person but have many things hanging in there that I do not wear consistently, because I don’t go out much. I turn the light off in my closet after going in there. LEAVE YOUR LIGHT ON! They hate light.
I have learned the hard way, that you must immediately put anything you purchase online into your dryer and dry on high heat for 30 minutes at the very least! These items will come with eggs and larvae after sitting in warehouses. They can even bring bed bugs into your home!
1 NEVER put a piece of worn clothing, not even a scarf, back in with your clean clothing. Not even if it was worn for 5 minutes! I used to wear pajamas twice. Never again!
I am now dealing with this evil tiny, impossible to see, pest again! Not sure where they came from. Did they come in on new clothes? Did I miss some last year? Who knows? But I am sick and eradicating these is a major undertaking! I don’t know how I can go through this again but I am just doing a little at a time and putting pest free clothing in sealed plastic as I clean it. Once closet and drawers are empty, I will start the task of deep cleaning, AGAIN.
I ripped the carpet out of my closet. The concrete is ugly but, if it helps, it’s worth it.
I know this is extremely long to read but if it helps one person to avoid what I have been through, it was worth the time it took to write!
Good luck May the Force be With You