Thank you for the very detailed walk through!

I got some today with the Pupal stage in them. I'll be stopping to get some nice, big freezer bags today.
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How do you know they have pupae in them? :-) If these are a recent purchase I would be concerned with the source. In my experience the only way to know if you have an outbreak is to find holes or see actual beetles running around in the box. :-)
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I actually learned a little something later on. The white bugs I saw crawling around WEREN'T cigar beetles as I thought =X (they looked just like the picture, in my defense).

I still froze them as a preventative measure, though.
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Had a beetle outbreak :-) Now, everything goes in the freezer!!!!
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Glad I stumbled on this, My box of Thompson java explorers that I got today are being prepped for freezer the 2 boxes of banditos and bundle of acids that arrive tomorrow will all be prepped and then sanitized wi freezer way and why not. I have a 100 ct Humidor just finishing its seasoned state tomorrow why contaminate a new good thing.
Thank you kindly for the info and all feedback , made a great 10 page info read.
I will also remember this next year when harvesting and aging, etc.
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Wow!! Great info. I had no idea. Had heard about these buggers but really had never seen them. Thanks for the info!!
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Awesome post and great read. Of all the posts I've read about freezing cigars, I would say that this is the most informative of em all! Great job! :-)
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Great article. It has scared the crap out of me though. Time to buy some freezer bags...
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Of all the reports written about beetles and what to do, this was by far the best and most informative. Outstanding job! My question is this...since I have a walk-in humidor crammed full of smokes (dont ask how many) and never have frozen one of them, am I too late to start the freezing process. Not only is this a hobby that I love, but, it is worth a lot of $$$ to be destroyed by these little beasties (Padron pic). Any info would be appreciated.
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It's never too late, imo. But it will be tedious for you to do it with that many smokes. A simpler option might be to get the beetle traps that are sold at some places. From what I have read they work like a charm. However, there is still debate on whether these cause the beetles to hatch in order to get to them, instead of staying dormant.

If you have some sort of large freezer (meat locker, etc) then it might not be that tedious to do.
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That is completely illogical... actually, it's impossible. It's not like you or I waking up out of slumber because we smell bacon cooking. In the case of an egg, there simply is nothing there that can smell the pheromone trap because there is no lifeform there, all that exists at that point is the genetic code and proteins etc to begin formation into a lifeform. An egg can't smell and instinctively begin an incubation process that is temperature based.

As for pheromone traps, their use is widely misunderstood. While they are typically used in cigar factories and other tobacco processing facilities, they are not put there to control problems, but rather to give a clear indication of when the factory might have a problem. When a female is caught, the typical proactive reaction is to go forward with the assumption that there are 100 or so eggs out there in some part of the factory and one must handle the situation appropriately.

The last thing you want to be doing is finding beetles in the traps - it means that some more front line control measure is failing.


ylo2na, To be as close to totally safe as can be, your best bet is to buy a trunk freezer. Doesn't have to be a really big one, you can get a $100 one at wal-mart or target etc and freeze in batches, just remember to keep the freeze treated cigars physically isolated from the not-yet-freeze processed stock.

Also, at 64F constant, according to Dr. Debora Trock (CA Academy of Science), Dr. Michael Rust (Professor of Entomology, UC Riverside), all eggs die within 6 weeks. At less than 62F, previously incubated eggs can't hatch. And finally, beetles have to fly to mate, and at temps less than 71.5F, the won't develop wings, ending the chain of lifecycles. BUT, eggs will still incubate, larvae will still hatch and eat, and eat, and eat, and pupate into adults before dying off due to old age, so damage to cigars can still occur at the larval stage.

Is your walk-in humidor air conditioned in such a manner that you can separately control it's temperature? Is it possible and economically feasible to take advantage of the cooler winter months and just chill the walk-in down to 60F for 8 weeks?
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Thanks for the response. I can control the temp with my ac...and, possibly take it down to 60 degrees but have never tried that. Right now, with the cold weather we are having in Tampa, I have shut off my ac and the temps range between 64 to 70. Of course, it is the summer months where I have a difficulty in keeping the temps down to the 70f range, especially in the afternoons. It sometimes reaches 76 to 78 degrees in the afternoon, but, cools down to the 70f range in the evening and overnight. When the temps reach over 74f, that is when I really am concerned about an infestation taking place. As for humidity, I havent felt the pressure when it runs a little higher but, I am still concerned during these times.
I like the idea of purchasing a freezer as the safest step to take. Am wondering if I should leave the sticks in the box and put them in the freezer as is. Putting them in freezer bags without freezing the boxes (in case of eggs or larvae) may be counterproductive. What is your take on this?
Ylo2na
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If your cigars have gone through a few summers where they spent weeks with daytime temps of 78F and nighttime temps of 70F and nothing has hatched, while of course there are no guarantees, it isn't too much of a stretch to say that it's likely that those cigars don't have have any eggs capable of incubating. Having beetle eggs in all cigars is not a given. They might not be there, and, if they are (were), they might have already been killed by fumigation or shattered by commercial blast freezing by the manufacturer and/or distributor.

Don't worry about trying to control the humidity to keep a handle on beetles since they can hatch and live at RH's far lower than where most, if not all, of us would likely find a cigar smokable (somewhere in the 30-40RH range is their bottom end IIRC).

I leave the cigars in the box after opening to inspect and then just freeze the whole thing after putting it back into it's vacuum seal bag and resealing, a ziplock bag or even a few layers of saran wrap if I can't get the box to fit into anything else. I do leave my cigars in the freezer longer due to the extra material being frozen; I go with a week or so, but that's not just because of the box, it's also because residential freezers cycle rather than maintain a constant low temp, and since it won't hurt the cigars, it's better to be safe than sorry. I don't see any added value in refrigerating before hand either, just straight to the freezer. Gradual cooldown isn't necessary, they survive going from ambient to -30F in minutes in a blast freezer, taking half a day to drop to 10F sure isn't going to hurt them.
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Like I said, "there is still debate" about how exactly they do so.

You have a further depth of knowledge about the tobacco industry than me. There have been a good number of B&M's that swear by these (walk-ins) and that is where I make the connection. But B&M's also talk smack about a wide variety of other things too. Have you personally used or experimented with these traps?? I would appreciate your insight.

On the point about temperature, I have certain references ( I will need to be on my work comp to find them) that show beetles flying around at 65 deg. However, that may be the exception and not the rule.
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Most B&M's also often swear that the patches of fuzzy stuff found on some of their cigars is plume. :-)

Take a step back and think about it Wayne, how does a trap that operates by emitting pheromones (sex scents - this is an animals way of biologically saying "I'm ready to mate") to attract beetles of the opposite sex and then capture them, somehow trigger a temperature based incubation in an egg that has no capability of smell or ability to mate even if it could process a pheromone scent? Doesn't happen. Can't happen. Jr High school level biology classes cover this.

I'd say the B&Ms need to look at how they are operating their HVAC systems instead of pointing the finger at impossibilities that they don't seem to understand. Might as well just blame the guy across the street for painting his building whatever color he chose, that makes about as much sense as their trap theories.

I have a little bit of experience with some of the traps, but I don't feel that is really anything special or even necessary for this conversation, I'm not a pest control expert, or research scientist, or biologist (or whatever the field is called where you specialize in insects) . They are simply jumping to illogical conclusions. One shouldn't need any experience to see the disconnect - simply understanding that the traps are pheromone based, and knowing what pheromones are, and that incubation of an egg is a temperature based process and a rudimentary understanding of the beetle's lifecycle is all anyone should need to see how the debate is invalid and an impossible occurrence. Just basic understanding should be sufficient.

Maybe the part about wings was a bit unclear, that wasn't about what temps they can fly at, I'm sure they can fly at 65F. It's that when they undergo chrysalis and pupate into an adult, if the temps are continuously lower during that period, according to that research, they won't develop wings and therefore can't fly and can't mate.
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Thank you for the write up on the trap debate.

Maybe I wasn't clear either. The temp of 63 (65 was where they raised it and still found them flying) degrees was kept constant. This was from a report that showed beetles may be evolving with temperature resistance.
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Very interesting and worrisome. If you can find the link to that report, I'd very much appreciate it so I can read the report.
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Here a link to an article on temperature resistance, however they make you pay for the full article now:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi...ournalCode=afs

It was 13C which is roughly 55.5F. There are a couple other ones out of Japan too, and that is the ones I referenced at 63 and 65 degrees, but I'll have to be at work for the links.
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Again, thanks for the response. After writing my last response, I quickly sent the ac down to 62 and most hygrometers in there read in the 60-62 range (at last count have 15-20 interspersed throughout the humidor). Since we are having abnormally lower temps the next few days, as suggested, I will leave the door open to the walk-in to utilize the outside 40+ temps anticipated for the next few days. As for RH, I really wasnt too concerned about that.
As an aside, dont sell yourself short on the knowledge you are passing out even though it may be rudimentary, as you explain. You have done a great service to all of us who are concerned about this problem; if nothing else, to get our brains working again to understand the logical, systematic process the beetle goes through in its life span. Now, it is up to us to do the checking, and where necessary, implement the correct methods needed to prolong the "life" of our "leafy" charges.
Best,
Ylo2na
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Thanks.

BTW, I just re-read what I wrote and I see a few things that were written poorly and could be taken incorrectly. I was trying to stress that something didn't require any highly advanced knowledge, and was not trying to point anything bad at you. Apologies if there was any misunderstanding there.

I don't know if leaving the door to the humidor vented to the outside like that is a good idea. You could introduce a new set of problems or other insects.

Welcome glad the info helped out a bit.
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