Unwanted bugs in your collection?
I see this topic come up often and I have never seen my own method mentioned so I figured it's time for a small tutorial (teef tutorial almost finished!).
If you find yourself, through whatever means, with unwanted beetles or bugs in your collections, this method has proven so valuable to me and I will explain why in a bit*.
Get real moth balls (the stinktohighhell little shiny balls meant for tight containers). Use little snack-sized ziplocks to put a few throughout the area of your collection for a few days.
I did this once in my car when a guy unknowingly put two bags of chicken feed infested with the crawlies in my car. These bugs would move from my car and into the feed storage and then from there into my shop and they were so bad they'd actually bore holes into my antlers. O.o
So I placed these baggies throughout my shop and inside my car and within hours I saw not a hair of any bug, but I left the balls a bit longer just to be sure. Then put the balls away and opened up the windows to air the places out before I occupied them again.
Once when I got an infested box: in the box went a few balls and I sealed it tight as hell for about a week or two before reopening it to lay the contents out on my shop's table to air out. I check the shop frequently and I've never had any return.
* I make mummies in my shop's backroom, that right there is a beetle feast, but because of a mothball placed every 3 feet I have never seen sign or shadow of a bug in my shop's backroom. Well, plenty of dead flies. >:] Flies just don't get it I guess.
I know a lot of folks talk about freezing but if you don't have one, this seems to work scaring them away for good and keeping them away in on-going projects. And remember if you do take the freezing road that you need to thaw and refreeze several times to be safe. Freezing them for a week and then putting them out for display is not going to do it. When I was cleaning feathers of potential feather mites I froze and thawed them once a week for a few months just to be safe as our freezer doesn't freeze very hard.
If you find yourself, through whatever means, with unwanted beetles or bugs in your collections, this method has proven so valuable to me and I will explain why in a bit*.
Get real moth balls (the stinktohighhell little shiny balls meant for tight containers). Use little snack-sized ziplocks to put a few throughout the area of your collection for a few days.
I did this once in my car when a guy unknowingly put two bags of chicken feed infested with the crawlies in my car. These bugs would move from my car and into the feed storage and then from there into my shop and they were so bad they'd actually bore holes into my antlers. O.o
So I placed these baggies throughout my shop and inside my car and within hours I saw not a hair of any bug, but I left the balls a bit longer just to be sure. Then put the balls away and opened up the windows to air the places out before I occupied them again.
Once when I got an infested box: in the box went a few balls and I sealed it tight as hell for about a week or two before reopening it to lay the contents out on my shop's table to air out. I check the shop frequently and I've never had any return.
* I make mummies in my shop's backroom, that right there is a beetle feast, but because of a mothball placed every 3 feet I have never seen sign or shadow of a bug in my shop's backroom. Well, plenty of dead flies. >:] Flies just don't get it I guess.
I know a lot of folks talk about freezing but if you don't have one, this seems to work scaring them away for good and keeping them away in on-going projects. And remember if you do take the freezing road that you need to thaw and refreeze several times to be safe. Freezing them for a week and then putting them out for display is not going to do it. When I was cleaning feathers of potential feather mites I froze and thawed them once a week for a few months just to be safe as our freezer doesn't freeze very hard.