Light traps

Kory Berrett <kory [at] juno__com> writes

>...  a client of mine with an IPM
>program in place was advised by their pest control contractor to
>consider the purchase and deployment of light traps in their new
>collections storage building.  The part of the building in question
>houses farm tools, gross functional objects, and a few horse drawn
>vehicles.  The traps use low wattage UV lamps as their lure.  You
>can look at one maker's line by visiting <URL:http://www.wmmg.com>,
>Whitmire Micro-Gen.  I guess I had dismissed UV attractants out of
>hand for the obvious reasons, but here are my questions.  Has anyone
>seen these put to use in any museum setting?  Has anyone evaluated
>these devices on a risk vs. benefit basis?  Is there a possibility
>of deploying these devices, mitigating against the worst light
>damage with filters, and still realizing the benefits of the trap?

Regarding the use of UV light traps in a museum storage:  After
discovering artifacts infested by powder post beetles in our
off-site storage area, we decided to try UV traps since we had no
success in trapping these insects with sticky traps.  We rented the
traps from a local pest control company since we were not very
confident that they would work.  As predicted, they were not
successful in capturing any powderpost beetles or very many other
insects (we kept them for a year).  A few small flies were found in
a trap near a poorly sealed door, but on the whole, we found that
sticky traps were more effective than the light traps for capturing
insects (other than the powder post beetles).  I would definitely
recommend renting the traps before buying them. Also, we used them
in an space that was infrequently used so the hazard of working
around them was minimized (signage warned staff that they were in
use and the lights were directed away from the artifacts to protect
them as well).

Heather Dumka
Conservator - Artifacts
Glenbow Museum
130-9th Avenue SE
Calgary, AB T2G 0P3
Canada


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 14:32
                Distributed: Thursday, December 7, 2000
                       Message Id: cdl-14-32-005
                                  ***