Pheromone Moth Traps (Box of 16)

You usually spot the damage before you spot the moth. A few small holes in a wool jumper, a bald patch on the carpet under the sofa, maybe a scruffy little moth fluttering out when you open the wardrobe. By that point the larvae have been feeding for weeks.

To put that in real terms, sixteen traps is a four bedroom house covered for six weeks at four traps a room. Two bedrooms and the same pack stretches to twelve weeks.

We've been selling pest control for forty years, and clothes moths are one of the problems people get most wrong. They buy a trap, hang it in the wrong place, catch nothing, and decide the moths have gone. They haven't.

So here's how we'd tell you to do it.

Put them high, and keep them out of draughts

Head height or above. Top shelf of a wardrobe, hung from the rail, a high shelf in the bedroom, up in the loft. Moths fly, and a trap sat in a drawer only ever samples that drawer.

Draughts are the thing nobody mentions. The trap gives off a scent plume that moths follow in, and a draught from a window, an air vent or a radiator scatters it before anything picks it up. Put a trap next to a vent, catch nothing, and you'll draw exactly the wrong conclusion. If a trap comes up empty in a draughty spot, move it and start the six weeks again.

Six weeks, not three months

That's how long the lure lasts. We'd rather tell you that than sell you four traps and let you think you're covered until Christmas.

Sixteen traps is what a season actually costs. Four areas monitored right through the seasons, or eight areas at once if you're trying to work out which room the trouble is coming from. Write the date on the edge with a biro when you put one up. Six weeks later it comes down, whether it's full or not.

Setting one up takes ten seconds

Peel the backing off, push the tab through the slot, put it in place. No sachets, no fiddling, the pheromone is already in the adhesive.

What the count is telling you

One or two moths in six weeks is background noise. Most UK homes have that and always will. Ten or more, or one trap filling while the rest stay empty, and you've found a breeding population.

This is where we'll be blunter than most people selling you traps. A trap catches adult moths. Adults don't eat your clothes. The larvae do, and the trap doesn't touch them, or the eggs. If your count is high the trap has done its job by finding the problem, and now you have to deal with it:

1. Empty the wardrobe, drawers or room the trap flagged
2. Vacuum it out properly, cracks and crevices included. A soft long haired brush gets where the nozzle won't. Vacuum bag straight out to the bin, not left in the cupboard
3. Hot wash everything that'll take it, 60 degrees where the label allows. Whatever won't goes in the freezer for a few days instead, which kills every stage of the life cycle. Dry cleaning does the same
4. Do the suitcases, bags and baskets stored alongside. That's where people miss them
5. Put a fresh trap back up so you can prove to yourself it worked

If the count is high enough that you need a treatment as well as a clear out, we sell those too, and we'll tell you straight if you don't need one.

What you get

1. 16 traps in total, supplied as 8 packs of 2
2. Pheromone lure built into the adhesive, nothing to assemble beyond folding it
3. Six weeks per trap
4. Insecticide free, no vapour, no odour
   
5. Clothes moths only. If you're finding moths in the pantry or in cereal packets you want a food moth trap, different pheromone, different pest