Help, I spotted a cigar bug in my humidor

[Funkadelic]

Hi y’all!

I recently started using a couple of new humidors (posted a few days ago). After curing it, I put my beloved sticks in it. I must say now that temp is NOT constant where I live at or at my home. At all. I know it adds risk to the beetle appearing.

That said, I was going though the sticks after a few weeks using the new humidors, and I spotted a beetle bug in the top tray. I killed it right away with my finger, so I have no clue if it was alive or just laying dead. But it was “juicy”, not dry… I got rid of that, and went through all the sticks one by one: no holes, no beetle dust anywhere. No beetles in the humidor either.

I wont lie to you folks: I feel terribly lazy about the sole idea of having to freeze the whole lot (150 cigars approx.), they aren’t a lot, but they’re in their sweetspot for smoking and took me a lot of work getting them where I like them.  They’re all Habanos bought from serious cigar shops in Spain. Some are 15 years old and all look great and fresh. I didn’t mix with ANY of unknown procedence, etc. I know Altadis (distributor in Spain) freezes all their cigars for import.

So my question is, what should I do? Is it possible it could be a dead bug from the importers freezing, that just fell from a stick?

The other question is, prior to actually freeze them (considering the work it took me to take them into the condition they’re now), is there any other way of knowing for sure if they’re affected by the bugs? Observation, etc., or once I see the holes in the wrapper it’s too late?

I know most of you will advise me to freeze, but I want to know if there’s any prior confirmation “drill” I can do before actually freezing. There are no symptoms in any of the sticks of bugs, to my surprise. I wonder if it’s just a dead bug but I kind of doubt it since it wasn’t dry, it was rather juicy (yuck).

Thank you all for your help!

[PapaDisco]

Mostly we're concerned with bugs that come from the factory, and those can be in larval form (most likely) or beetle form (but these will quickly chew their way out), so your really old sticks likely won't have anything live in them, and as such a search for beetle holes might be useful.  I doubt that a larva could survive dormant for 15 years, but I don't know that for a fact.

Can you separate out your new stuff?  Just freeze that?  The most likely scenario (IMHO) is that you had a cigar that shipped with a live larva in it that morphed into a beetle, which chewed its way out (there's a nice round hole somewhere in a stick) and then died.  It takes two beetles to tango, btw, a male and a female.

As El Pres will tell you, you gotta freeze anything you picked up personally in Cuban, as well as custom rolls.  As to the risk in a Spanish cigar store I know not, but the stuff straight from Habanos is of course frozen before shipping and you're likely o.k. there except for the rare, single beetle that you'll see once in a long while.

[Fugu]

Mate, if it was "juicy", it has been alive.

Sure it was a tobacco beetle?

As Poppy said, I suspect it slipped through somehow, not via the "normal" channels. Could have been infected everywhere (if it really was a Lasioderma). Eggs are reported to survive quite some years. But it seems, as you say your conditions are not the most stable (and - I suspect - haven't been before) any eggs would have hatched sooner. So, I agree, rather unlikely to derive from your older stash (although Altadis has not been freezing 15 yrs ago, neither did Cuba).

 

[Funkadelic]

Thanks for your replies.

Just so you know, in Spain it is very very normal to find 10+ y/o sticks, especially if it's a rare vitola. People here don't give a crap about aged or strange vitolas anyway. So all my vintage stuff I bought recently, just treasures I find now and then, but I haven't aged them myself.

To answer some of your doubts:

- There are indeed newer sticks in the humidor.
- All the sticks are from official Habanos dealer, both newer and older sticks.
Not sure it makes sense to isolate the newer sticks, since they've been along with the older ones for quite a while, so I figure it's anyone's guess to know which have the bug or not. If I do decide to freeze, I'll do the whole lot and leave none out. But freezing is what I'd like to avoid.

Any suggestions  -apart from freezing lol- about what I should what for and for how long/with what frequency? Guidelines would be useful. Thank you!!

[Fugu]

18 hours ago, Funkadelic said:

Thanks for your replies.

Just so you know, in Spain it is very very normal to find 10+ y/o sticks, especially if it's a rare vitola.

... and not rare to find tobacco beetles...

 

Joking aside - difficult to give you any safe advice apart from freezing. From what you describe, you can't rule out any particular boxes with any certainty. Therefore, either freeze all or nothing. And don't just check the cigars, also carefully check the inner corners of the boxes for larval puppae. In your case, although I am not the strongest proponent of it, the safest would be freezing everything.

The only alternative to freezing I'd see would be keeping all your boxes separate in single zip-loc or vac-bags, to prevent further spreading, and checking them regularly, every 3-4 weeks initially. The bug will most likely not have reproduced within your stash if it just was a single one freshly hatched from one of your boxes. So, I suspect there will only be the one box infested from which this beetle stems (however, if you hold several boxes of that same source, it could be more than one box of course). You will probably find out in the next couple of weeks, which one it was, given you keep your "incubation" temp up....  

It is not unlikely that the infestation derived from one of your providers in Spain, e.g. when a shop is not running its storage very clean. The tobacco beetle is cosmopolitan, mainly but not exclusively to the warmer regions and not restricted to Cuba of course.

[Funkadelic]

Thanks, I'll probably just end up freezing all just to keep from freaking out!

[ThePolskiOgorki]

3 hours ago, Funkadelic said:

Thanks, I'll probably just end up freezing all just to keep from freaking out!

I would. You will always doubt it otherwise. You can always quarantine a bunch and not freeze them for smoking while you wait for the others to come back from the cryo treatment.