Requests for Varied Carpet Beetle identifications continue to pour in

Subject: Small beetle, windowsill & baseboards
Location: Vancouver Island, BC – southern tip.
April 13, 2014 11:12 am
Hi,
I have been finding these little beetles on my windowsill in my atrium (18′ ceilings) and along the baseboards in that atrium. There is no carpet – it’ s laminate flooring. The house is only 7 years old. The atrium is our ‘dining room’ which is only used for dinner in the evenings and kept clean.
Can you please advise what the bug is – I’m assuming it’s some sort of beetle.
Signature: Thanks, Tammy

Hi Tammy,
You have Varied Carpet Beetles, Anthrenus verbasci , currently our most common identification request with an average of five requests arriving daily.  Varied Carpet Beetles are members of the family Dermestidae, a group that contains many members that are cosmopolitan and that infest homes.  The adults, which you are finding, feed on pollen, and they are likely congregating on the window sills in an attempt to gain access to the outdoors.  The larvae are the pests that infest homes.  According to BugGuide, they are “primarily a household pest on plant (dried fruits/nuts) and animal materials; regularly encountered in dried-milk factories, occasionally in flour mills and warehouses” and they eat a “wide variety of materials of animal origin (wool, fur, skins…)(1); stored food materials and products (biscuits, cakes, seeds, wheat, maize, oats, rice, cayenne pepper, cacao, and dried cheese)”.  They are reviled in museums and BugGuide also notes they are: “arguably, world’s most important pest of insect collections.”  The best way to eliminate them from the home, in fact the only way to eliminate them from the home, is to identify the source of the infestation, the place where the larvae are feeding, and discard any food or other item that might be feeding the larvae.