Common Furniture Beetle

• The one- or two-millimetre holes we see in a piece of furniture are not the insect's way in but the adult's way out: by the time they appear, the larva has already spent years inside.
• The larval cycle lasts from two to five years, and stretches out further still if the wood is dry and poor in nutrients.
• It needs a certain amount of moisture in the wood, so central heating and the dry air of modern homes have greatly reduced how often it occurs.
• This is the woodworm of furniture, and its telltale signs are exit holes of about two millimetres and the fine sawdust that falls from them.
• The holes do not indicate an active infestation: they are where the adults came out. The real damage is inside, and it can go on for years without anything showing.
• Its name, the deathwatch beetle, comes from the sound the adult makes by tapping its head against the wood to call a mate: an audible ticking in the night-time silence of old houses, which came to be associated with death and the deathbed vigil.
• It needs wood with a certain amount of moisture, above 12%, so central heating and well-dried timber control it better than any treatment.
• It depends on symbiotic fungi and yeasts in its gut to digest cellulose.
• It is a serious threat to heritage: antique furniture, altarpieces, coffered ceilings and historic timber structures.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat & environment

Dry wood of furniture, beams, frames and floorboards

Sources consulted: Building Research Establishment (Reino Unido); Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España; Natural History Museum de Londres