your shirt, your coat, your smart frock? All were ruined? And now it's happening again.

The spring's over, and the season's here. The big sport begins: the moths are back and

here they come, bunched up, neck and neck, wingtip to wingtip, every one a moth and every

moth with an evil design...

Hello! My name is David Pinniger, and I'm an entomologist, which means I study insects.

And my job is to help people with pests in

historic houses and museums.

And I'm Dee Lauder, and I'm English Heritage's Collections Pest Control Manager.

And we're here today to help you learn how to deal with clothes moths.

Clothes moths are small and silvery-gold,

and you'll see them flying around the house. And they don't do any damage at all - but

they lay eggs which hatch into tiny grubs, or larvae, and they are the things that cause

the damage.

Clothes moth larvae will eat a lot of different

fabrics, but only those which have materials of animal origin. So we're talking about wool,

fur, feathers and silk. The larvae have jaws at the front which work sideways like bolt

cutters, and they'll cut through fibres of carpet or your best woollen jumper.

Clothes moth larvae will eat clean clothes, but they much prefer it when they're stained and dirty.

They will also eat other materials which are stained such as this dining room carpet, where

food has been spilled on the carpet, and the larvae have completely eaten away all of the

fabric in that area.

You need to look for signs of the larvae, like in this carpet, where the larvae have

been walking across and spinning silk, which

they leave behind. They also leave behind small gritty pellets known as frass, which

is insect poo!

Clothes moth larvae can wreak real havoc onto

items, so for example this piece of fur here, this has been stored away for quite a considerable

amount of time. At English Heritage we would regularly check items like this to ensure

that this kind of damage does not happen.

The other thing that we've always done is

to use very, very good house cleaning methods. Instead of just running a vacuum across the

floor we actually go a little bit deeper with our cleaning. So this will involve moving

heavy items of furniture sitting on top of carpets and cleaning underneath them regularly,

especially during the spring and summer months.

You can basically carry out the same sort of measures that we're carrying out at English

Heritage. You could also carry out your own treatment at home - so for example, if you

find that a favourite jumper of yours has got clothes moth larvae in it, just simply

bag it up, place it in your freezer for two weeks at -18C and that should kill off all

the moth larvae.

There's no such thing as a silver bullet for

clothes moths - we've been battling them for centuries.

Yes, in fact during the 16th century, Elizabeth I employed eight men to beat her furs for

the duration of a whole day! So good luck beating those clothes moths in your homes!

You can still win! Get busy at once. Leave not a moth, not an egg in a basket-full. Beat

the field, and keep your shirt for next season!