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I am dealing with woodworms at home and I am looking for an effective method to contain their spreading and eliminate them from my furniture. I would just like that they chose another place to build up their home, that should not be my flat!!!

The woodworms are in my furniture since 5 years more or less. I have at least 5 wooden pieces of furniture occupied by woodworms. They are mostly chairs, a showcase and a chest. I figured out that they were woodworms because of the sawdust and the little holes left in the wood. What happens is that these tiny animals move from a piece to another and every year a different piece of forniture is contaminated.

I did not call a pest control and I had ever dealt the situation on my own. What I did since now it has been to inject a solvent with a syringe inside the holes in order to kill the eggs that they supposedly laid down inside the hole.

However now I am a little bit worried because in this season (spring) they are growing up a lot and spreading in my house and because they started getting inside 3 uncontaminated wooden doors I care a lot about.

Now my request is the following: could someone suggest me some effective methods to prevent their spreading? I know it may sound strange, but does someone know the habits of these little animals? Or does someone knows a useful book or guide to face against them?

I am able to contain the emergency injecting the solvent in the holes, but I definitely cannot figure out how and where they lay down the eggs. This could be very useful because I would be able to prevent them dig their hole. Indeed I understood that the big hole we can see in the wood is the exit hole, while the entrance hole is a tiny one, almost not visible unaided eye.

Thank you to everyone!

Marco
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I believe you should contact a licensed exterminator. My experience with hard to reach burrowing insects or worms was dealt with by an exterminator who has access to products we do not. For example we have had problems with carpenter bees which travelled long distances through the beams. With a puff of some powder" which the creature carries back to the queen, they were eliminated. (we had also tried many things ourselves with no luck)

user55330
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  • I think the same as you after I got more information on how the woodworms behave. It seems that the infestation is harder and bigger than I thought. – Marco Jun 22 '16 at 09:44
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Wikipedia says usual approaches are either insecticides (possibly supplemented with electrical bug zappers to kill emerging adults), or moving the piece into a deep freeze for a few weeks (usually expensive and may cause some damage). Low oxygen treatment is non-damaging but even slower and still usually expensive.

keshlam
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  • Low oxygen treatment is expensive but supposedly one of the most effective. Microwave is another kind of treatment, very effective too and the less expensive. However it is not applicable to every piece of furniture, some of them could be damaged. – Marco Jun 22 '16 at 09:47
  • Treatments using insecticides like pyrethroid, especially for woodworms, or permethrin, for insects in general, do not guarantee the problem will be solved but are effective for prevention. – Marco Jun 22 '16 at 09:50
  • Around here, a large meat locker is about $100 per month. The better sites have a flash freeze area which *seems* colder than the rest. A DIY low oxygen environment could be made with a dry cleaner bag, duct tape, and a CO2, nitrogen, or argon tank. None of those seem particularly expensive. – wallyk Jul 21 '16 at 19:14