Professional  Carpet Beetle Treatments

If you find holes in your clothes or curtains in your house in New York, or chewed areas of your carpets or rugs, it could be due to carpet beetles. But it could also be due to clothes moths, silverfish or even cockroaches, so you need to do a bit of detective work to determine the culprit.

What are carpet beetles?

There are two main types of carpet beetle; black carpet beetles and variegated carpet beetles. They are small beetles normally, variegated carpet beetles about 2-3mm in size, with black carpet beetles 3-5mm long.

It’s the beetle larvae which do all the damage. They look like hairy beetles have the common name – “woolly bears”.

The carpet beetle larvae can take 9 months to develop before it’s ready to build a cocoon to develop into an adult.

VARIEGATED CARPET BEETLE ADULT (UP TO 3MM LONG) 

WITH HAIRY LARVA - “WOOLLEY BEAR”.

BLACK CARPET BEETLE ADULT (UP TO 6MM LONG)

What do carpet beetles eat?

The carpet beetle larvae eat all types of animal fibres not just woollen carpets, rugs and clothes, but also fur, silk, felt, feathers and leather. They don’t eat synthetic materials and won’t normally eat cotton.

They like to live in dark, undisturbed places, which is why they often damage carpet under heavy furniture.

The adult beetles prefer to live outside feeding on flowers. You can often see the adult beetles on window sills. These are new adults that have emerged from the cocoons inside  your home trying to get out and are a sure sign you have an infestation somewhere in your home.

How to get rid of carpet beetles in New York?

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To successfully deal with a carpet beetle problem it’s important to find the site of the infestation. 

This takes a bit of detective work… it could be in a dark corner of a room, but it may also be in the roof void or sub-floor where the beetles may be feeding on a dead animal. It can be a bit tricky to find the source infestation and sometimes it can be a bit gross (!), which is why most people will call a professional pest manager.