[Nhcoll-l] [pestlist] Dermestid help

[Alex Roach]

Hi Tonya
The 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 wishes
Alex Roach
Modified Atmospheres
0414 663 472

On Tue, 20 Nov 2018 at 12:04 am, 'bugman22' via Museumpests <
pestlist at googlegroups.com> 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 <Tonya.Haff at csiro.au>
> To: nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>; pestlist <
> pestlist at googlegroups.com>
> Cc: Alex.Drew <Alex.Drew at csiro.au>; Christopher.Wilson
> <Christopher.Wilson at csiro.au>
> 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
>
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-- 
*Alex Roach*
*Director*
Modified Atmospheres
*M:* 0414 663 472
ABN: 66 164 577 557
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