tobacco bugs

[driftinmark]

I was shredding tobacco yesterday and when I reached for the xanthi yaka , I noticed there were some brown specs in it....and guess what? they were moving, lol.....looked like little beetles....

I havent used this tobacco in a long time so they must have hatched in the bag...this was purchased by my son for my birthday present....he got it from a site that I wont put here....

I didnt have much left, so it wasnt a total loss, now im wondering how many of them lil critters I smoked, lol.....

 

[Knucklehead]

Don posted a picture of some traps he uses to catch some little brown creatures that occasionally comes in with the tobacco. I forget where I saw it, but he and Michibachy both had pictures. It sounds like the same critter.

 

[AmaxB]

This is INTERESTING!! I had a woman who had bought a pond bag of a roll your own pipe tobacco for cigs. She came back 4 or 5 days later and claimed the tobacco had bugs we looked at here and said, are you serious. She opened the bag and said look! We did. At first we saw nothing and than it was as though the tobacco had come to life! Hundreds no thousands of these small dark brown Beatles were crawling all through the tobacco. We gave her a new bag of tobacco and the biggest apology.
Still have no clue as to what they were...

 

[FmGrowit]

I ordered more today...

Pheromone traps

 

[AmaxB]

Yep that's them!
What are they?
Checked the link R beetles
This was funny:
If you smoke wash your hands before handling any trap as the nicotine could contaminate the trap causing the pests to avoid the trap rather than pursue it!

 

[deluxestogie]

Lasioderma serricorne is the tobacco beetle. You can kill the adults by freezing for 6 days, though this likely will not kill the eggs. Remove from freezer for 10 days (to allow the stork to deliver the next generation), then re-freeze it for another 6 days.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the tobacco beetle was exported in cured tobacco from (I believe) the Philippines to all over the world. Commercial warehouses sometimes fumigate for it.

Cigarette beetles commonly infest dried tobacco and tobacco products - hence their name. They also infest raisins, figs, dates, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, chili powder, curry powder, cayenne pepper, paprika, yeast, drugs, legume seeds, barley, cornmeal, flour, soybean meal, sunflower meal, wheat, wheat bran, rice meal, beans, cereals, fish meal, peanuts, dry yeast, dried flowers, leather, woolen cloth, and bamboo. They also may damage the leaves and bindings of books when feeding on the paste, or overstuffed furniture when infesting the straw, hair, etc.

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2083.html

Curiously, the adults do not eat.

Bob

 

[LeftyRighty]

yeah, the freezing technique will work well on killing tobacco beatles. Good process to use if you bring store bought or internet-bought tobacco into your home, so you don't contaminate your home-grown.
Also, a fermenting kiln, temperatures above 110-120 will kill the bugs and their eggs. So, after kilning, store your tobacco in a tight containers, ziploc bags, etc. Interesting to note that temperatures to 135 degrees or higher will destroy almost any insect and their eggs, even the difficult ones like bed bugs.

 

[deluxestogie]

...store your tobacco in a tight containers, ziploc bags, etc.

That's a very good point. Cardboard boxes don't qualify--especially beer-flavored cardboard boxes. Plastic is a barrier. Cardboard is lunch.

Bob

 

[Boboro]

I thought you needed air for it to age.

 

[deluxestogie]

I thought you needed air for it to age.

It always has air within a container. If you fully squeeze out the air from a Zip Lock holding tobacco, it still has sufficient air. It does not need air movement. It does need some moisture, just not very much.

Leaf in low case (not fully dried), kept at room temperature will age. If the bag is sealed for several months, you may notice some odd aromas when you open it. It just needs to air-out and be brought back into case to be ready.

Bob

 

[Boboro]

I dont buy much leaf, but will be careful with it. I bought 2 cartons of cigs. in Miami. They were full of worms. Had to smokeem any way. I was on a boat. I had to hold my fingers over the holes and they would let out little puffs of smoke when the worms would comburst.

 

[FmGrowit]

Curiously, the adults do not eat.

Bob

This what is widely accepted to be fact, but I'm not to sure about it. The beetles I trapped last year in the pictures above did a lot of damage to the leaf. They might not eat, but they sure love borrowing holes in tobacco.

 

[rainmax]

Many years ago tobacco Beatles eats few boxes of my cigars. I make few pictures that time with my first digital camera and here are some pictures

 

[bonehead]

i've never seen any in my stored tobacco so i guess it's good not to have everything. maybe i should wear my reading glasses more but i would not want to be greedy.

 

[BarG]

It helps to periodicly inspect any stored sealed bags for tobacco beetles. One way to tell is to shake the bag and look for small dark specs. That could mean tobacco dust and debris from the larvae eating. Another thing to look for is tiny burrow holes in leaves or stems, particularly around tops of stems or where tied into hands I noticed. This could be to higher moisture content but that is an assumption on my part. Apparently it won't take much to have a beetle in your carefully stored homegrown. I have some that has been sealed for a year and just noticed a few bags with these signs. They are all in the freezer now for the prescribed treatment. Luckily I caught them when I did. I have been considering kilning a new batch. It will have to wait now. I check my wrapper bags much more frequently since even slight damage can degrade a wrapper.

An important thing to remember also is if you open a suspected bag take it outside in case there are any live adults . I found none in the one bag I opened just larvae, but some of the tiny brown specs are most likely dead adults.

 

[rainmax]

 

[BarG]

Thats different than ours. Tomorrow i will take 15LBS out of the freezer for 10 days to let any eggs hatch and refreeze for 6 more days.My cigarette beetle is also called drug store beetle and also gets in flour and corn meal.
I got paranoid and froze even if not needed.

A side note. I have never noticed any of this in my hanging shed.

 

[Matty]

I have a few tobacco beetles in a large cooler full of wrapper. Each winter I put the whole thing outside to freeze. Problem is that I've put "new" leaf in that cooler here and there. Odd thing is that they only eat the one kind of wrapper, there's no holes in anything else, yet...