Help - away from home and maggots on our kitchen ceiling! What do we do?

[loveyouradvice]

DD at home and freaked out - she unfortunately left the compost bin under the sink unemptied for 3 weeks. And then found maggots on the kitchen walls and ceilings... just 5 or 6 at this stage, but after our weekly cleaner gave the area a very good clean (and disinfected the bin area) , there are now some in the cupboard near the sink where we keep bottles of oil and containers of rice, etc.

Sadly DD not in a fit state to sort.

We're not back for another two weeks. And are concerned they might roam further - we have a large larder at the back of the kitchen.

What do we need to do?? Never had this problem before or known anyone who has... but then not left a bin unemptied that long either.

Exactly
The OP didn’t mean anyone else on the Op

But turns out there’s been another,
presumably adult around?

How old is she OP? You seem to be avoiding answering the question? If she was ill why have you left her so long tho I can’t believe she was too ill to empty a caddy in 3 weeks! Who else is supposed to be with her? Anyhoo I would get professional cleaner in you can’t leave it for another 2 weeks

Call your cleaner in for another clean including tossing food from cupboards and washing cupboards out. Suck it up re cost.

I’d be fuming with her! Who doesn’t empty a bin for 3 weeks??? That is revolting!!! Ours is done every night!

She either needs to sort her shit out or you need to pay someone to go in and do a deep clean or come home.

Incubation period is only a few days so it will need to be repeated. There must still be flies if further maggots have appeared so ideally set fly traps. We use jars of vinegar to attract them with either oil or washing up liquid to thicken it so they cannot escape. If the recycling has now been put outside there will be more maggots/flies developing in that bin so once collected it will need a thorough clean too.

As an angler who uses maggots a lot… don’t overreact. Pick up any you can see and put them outside. The vast majority will disappear into any crevices you can find. You won’t see them. In a week they will turn to casters… brown hard cases, then another 1-2 weeks flies will hatch. Open windows to let them out or swat them. Rolled up magazines work quite well.
They like to lay eggs on raw meat, so don’t leave steak lying around and you won’t get an infestation.

And anything in that cupboard and the caddy needs disinfecting at high temperatures or through the dishwasher.

Think about it folks….

Use FLY spray on the maggots.
It kills them!

I have a phobia or anything that wriggles so you’d find gone to a burnt out shell…it needs to be sorted out asap as new flies will
lay more eggs. Maggots just seem to multiply like crazy, we had some in our outside wheelie nomad I was actually too scared to walk past the bin as there were more and more every time we opened the lid. I’m still a bit phobic of the wheelie bin!

oh god. This is why our food caddy now lives outside. I went away over the summer and ds left it too long and got maggots. Thankfully he sorted it himself but despite disinfecting numerous times I still think it smells.

it’s a good idea in theory but really those caddies need emptying daily, not weekly.

Boiling water to kill them if you can't bear the thought of picking them up, wear gloves You could scrape them up between two bits of card into a plastic bucket at then in with the boiling water, when cool tip them on the garden somewhere for the birds to eat. It's instant they straighten out and that's them dead. Your daughter should do this as it's her fault & a good life lesson for her to clean up properly or it will happen again. She won't forget it.

@loveyouradvice
Drip drip went the drip

Interestingly now discovered it is not DD fault but DH.....

.... Not maggots, but Indian meal moths... he'd left a couple of bags of grains on the top shelf of a cupboard which none of us knew about. Holes nibbled in them. Been there for ages, so who knows what precipitated or why... but yes, are now exploring beyond their safe dark hidden corner of the cupboard.

DD is now emptying cupboard and will clean and disinfect it. She is getting braver but it is very tough for her. And despite others comments I am very proud of her - she is both currently ill, and longterm ND so everyday things are much tougher for her. Step by step she is getting there.

And cleaner will do a thorough check/clean too when she is in. And friend coming in to do the ceiling.

Hopefully that will clear it, but as others advise we'll keep an eagle eye and if we need to do it again (or wider) we will. We'll check thoroughly every week, and I've been forensic in working out what has actually been seen where.

ps we jumped to the assumption of maggots becuase this is how DD described them, and because of where they were located and what had happened... she didn't dare look in the compost bin to see if there were any there when she did empty it!

Wow I find this thread really scary

We don't have those caddies yet

Maggots completely and totally freak me out and scare me

This happened to us - it was sort of comical in the end. The maggots crawled away from their food source so they could pupate. We thought we found them all but obviously didn’t. Anyway, c mid December we suddenly had a load of huge blue bottles in the house. We just swatted them. It wasn’t some kind of terminal disaster. So I wouldn’t waste money on pest control, but you may well get a sudden surprise

Before I saw your last message @loveyouradviceI was going to say that they are much more likely to be pantry moth larvae given the time of year and the fact that they are on the ceiling as that’s what they do.
I had an infestation last year and it was the bane of my life for about 6 weeks. I’d dread walking into the kitchen every morning as I’d have cleared them all off the ceiling the night before (a horrible task in itself)
The moths get in EVERYTHING. You need to go through everything in your cupboards and chuck out anything that is open .Very obvious stuff that is grain / wheat based like granola, cereal , flour, sugar… anything that has been opened but the most 😳 thing for me was an unopened box of stock cubes. They had somehow got into those too and were covered. I chucked everything because you have to. I did it with my 18 year old DD and we felt sick!
in the meantime you need to get these to stop the moths so they don’t get the chance to turn into larvae
https://amzn.eu/d/0dHcn36W
and this
NOPE! CP Moth Killer Spray... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B096N195HB?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
For the ones you see on the ceiling .

I still have the moth traps on shelves now as I can’t face going back to this time last year. You can tell if they have got into food items as there is a weird cobwebby thing going on in everything. The seals, in the actual food. I was so convinced they were in everything I threw the lot anyway just in case.
You should (when you get home or she should) clean and spray the inside carcass of the cupboards (hinges/ shelf runners etc) . Those little fuckers get everywhere.
It’s a bit labour intensive but worth it!

If they are maggots from the bin they are probably just flies. You can hoover them off the wall and ceiling. Bleach is not an insecticide. I don't think the maggots themselves carry infections, some prople handle them.

You can use a fly spray (close the door and go outside for a while) which will kill any actual flies. It probably needs doing daily until they are all gone. You can also hoover up the dead flies, no need to touch them.

I occasionally help an incompetent neighbour, and tip the maggots out of their bin onto the road, where the birds quickly eat them, then thoroughly hose it out to remove any food traces they can eat.

Transfluthrin, found in moth killers, will also kill flies, larvae and eggs. You can get slow-release cassettes intended for drawers and wardrobes, and put them in the cupboard. They are intended for small spaces so you will need several, the vapour disperses and breaks down in sunlight so the cupboard needs to be closed. I don't suppose it would be used near unsealed food.

I think that you're being a bit over dramatic about this.
Just ask your cleaner - who after all cleans for a living - if they'll go in and sort it out.
It doesn't sound particularly horrendous.

It's pretty obvious what must be done.

Then I'm a bit laid back about this because nothing compares to the cat - dead rat-maggots 'love triangle' of 2017.

No cleaner and couldn't possibly left it and wouldn't ask any way.

Boy did I have to steal myself for that one...

Pantry meal moths - yep we’ve had those before from a bag of flour that had been left too long. Also weevils as well…..

https://www.plantoeat.com/blog/2024/03/got-pantry-moths-heres-what-to-do/

One thing I always do now is to freeze flour for 2 days as soon as I buy it, this has helped. And keep dry food bags rotated. For a while we kept all dry foods sealed in large plastic boxes.

I think it’s always a bit freaky for young people when they first see maggots or larvae because we live in such clean environments. DD as an older teen videoed the one she found and sent a dramatic message to me at work ‘omg what do I do’ 😂

General household cleaners won’t kill them you need to bleach. Zap them with a bleach spray.

We have had a kitchen caddy for years and have never had a maggot so don’t stress .

I second all of this OP. Pantry moths are a total pain and get into every packet and crevice in the kitchen. We went way for two weeks and came back to the ceilings covered in the maggots.
Every packet of dried food had to be chucked out - open or used. They chew through packaging so can get into unopened boxes and packets. We then kept all new dried goods in plastic containers with an airtight seal or in the freezer. All cupboards were deep cleaned and steamed every couple of days for months. The little buggers just kept popping up! I also bought sticky pantry moth traps which definitely helped, but it took bloody ages to get rid of them.

The traps use pheremones and only attract males so it's only really useful to see how effective your pest control methods are.

What you really need is a packet of trichogramma evanescens, tiny parasitic wasps that lay their eggs in the moth eggs. You need to do a really deep clean first, as pps have said, then put the sachet with the wasps in the room with the infestation to deal with any missed eggs. Continue to kill every moth/larva you see and after a while you should stop seeing them. Don't have traps out at the same time as the wasps.