Silverfish in wine cellar?

[Tom_S]

We've got a storm cellar in which I keep my wine, and last night I noticed that a lot of the labels have been eaten away around the edges. I'm guessing that it's silverfish which keep doing this, though I've never seen any down there.

The odd thing is that the bottles of wine laying in wooden wine crates don't seem to be affected, but the ones which are laying in open boxes and the bottles being stored upside down in cardboard wine cases seem to be affected the most. In fact, one box appears to have had the outside of it eaten up in various spots all over it.

The bottles with the vinyl labels aren't affected.

I guess I'm going to have to pull all the wine out and drop a bug bomb down in there to get rid of all the bugs. It's not a real big space down there, so hopefully it will be fumagated easily.

 

[jamesngalveston]

could be termites

 

[sour_grapes]

Good way to make your wine appear aged. Instant vintage!

 

[Tom_S]

could be termites

There's no evidence of any wood being eaten down there (there are wooden shelves around two walls) so I'm going to go with silverfish until I see anything definite. And the wine in the wooden boxes are less affected than the ones in the cardboard boxes, so that leads me to believe it's silverfish.

 

[Tom_S]

Update... all the images of silverfish damage I'm finding online match the same kind of damage being done to my labels. Online sources say that fogging is rarely effective because it doesn't get into the cracks & other places where silverfish live, but dust insecticides do work well. We've got some stuff left over which we used for ants, so I'll check & see if it's effective against silverfish too.

 

[jamesngalveston]

we use boric acid here for silver fish and the waterbugs typical in texas.

 

[Jericurl]

James, I was just about to mention waterbugs and boric acid.

Tom, it could be worse....there could be waterbugs down there. Which look like huge 3 inch roaches... *shuddering*

The last time I had one in the house Manthing thought I was just going to set the house on fire and be done. I hate those things.
HATE.

Anyway, sprinkle boric acid around the entire perimeter of the room and any additional entry points, ie windows, vents, etc.
I have never seen anything work better, including when I worked for an apartment complex and people would come out with their major chemicals and spray everywhere.

Also, see if diatomaceous earth (sp?) works on silverfish. If so, same thing, sprinkle all around.

 

[Tom_S]

I sprinkled some diatomaceous earth around after work and hope that will take care of the problem. The package said it works on silverfish and other crawling bugs. There are very few labels which have not been eaten on. I plan to build a wine rack down there in the future and want to make sure my labels will remain intact. I've still got some bottles down there from 2008 and 2009, and luckily they were not affected. But I'd like to know what's in them if I let them sit down there much longer.

 

[tonyt]

Silverfish love cardboard boxes. The hide in the corigated folds.

 

[Turock]

If it's feasible, might be a good idea to do some caulking/foaming of cracks and such to eliminate avenues for them to get in.

 

[Tom_S]

Basically it's a concrete box with a non-airtight wooden door (which I hope to replace in the future) and a small window about the size of a cinder block. Until I replace the door with an airtight one, I think it's useless to try sealing up cracks.

 

[Turock]

Until you do that, then boric acid is probably your best defense.