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Facts About Tobacco
INSECT PESTS AND MOLD
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Insects
Agricultural pests have pestered mankind since our first
ancestor realized they were competing with him for the food that
hung on the trees. Pests also affect what we smoke, so smokers
must know how to protect their precious cigars from them. |
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Insects decimate most crops only while the
plants are growing. Tobacco is different, being stored for long
periods, rather than being consumed while fresh. This allows the
hatching of eggs into progressive stages of development to adult
insect pests. Infestation can erupt anywhere along the line from
curing barn to customer. Pests are like unwelcome in laws who
drop in unexpectedly, and an irate customer with holes in his
Hoyos can create some unpleasantness in your humidor. |
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We're talking about Lasioderma serricone, aka
the tobacco or cigarette beetle. It causes us more grief than
all the grubs, beetles, thrips, moths, and other bugs, because
it attacks dried tobacco. Thus, it strikes after work has been
expended by farmer, cigar manufacturer, or tobacconist, which
maximizes its economic impact. The enormity of its damage to
tobacco products runs to tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of
dollars annually. It is the most widely distributed tobacco pest
of all, and populates tobacco products from every source country
that supplies premium cigars, including Connecticut and other
domestic tobacco leaf. |
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Eggs of Lasioderma serricone, the
"tobacco beetle."
Larval stage
Pupa (chrysalis) stage
Adult stage, side view
Adult stage, top view
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Notice I said premium cigars. To my knowledge,
problems with this bug are rare in cheap cigars. Nor are
cigarettes affected, as they were years ago. Apparently, today's
usage of chemicals in these products makes them as unpalatable
to the insect as they are to discriminating smokers. However,
before this chemical adulteration begins, the beetle relishes
cigarette, plug, and snuff tobacco to the same degree as premium
cigar tobacco. |
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Lasioderma is an indoor pest, living within the
tobacco and other plants it consumes throughout all four stages
of its life: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The problem lies not
so much in the amount of leaf it consumes, but in the byproducts
of its existence: dust, its corpse, and "refuse," which some
call poo poo. |
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Oddly enough, no less respected a source than
Scientific American Supplement (January, 1920), noted some cigar
smokers preferred cigars laced with this refuse! Since no one
has ever told me, "Here ... try this cigar. It has a foot to
head trail of beetle scat," I wonder if some cigars I've smoked
owed their lip smacking flavor to excremental enhancement. Don't
scoff at the possibility, since it can burrow the length of a
cigar and leave no tell tale hole in the wrapper. Tipoffs may be
a hard draw, uneven burn, or dust in the mouth upon drawing on
the cigar. Its evidence is often a sprinkling of brown dust in a
box's floor. A small, brown aerobatic insect in your walk in is
not a good sign. Somebody told me once, a larva pops when a
cigar's coal hits it, but I can't attest to that. |
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Lasioderma likes tobacco that is compacted, be
it leaves or finished cigars. It can wreak its most expensive
damage in choice cigar wrapper, where just a few holes can ruin
an otherwise pristine leaf in a very short time. It sometimes
burrows between adjacently packed cigars, leaving channels down
both cigars' lengths. |
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The larval, or worm, stage of the insect's life
is when most damage occurs. When it next metamorphoses into a
pupa, it rests within a cocoon, and is thus harmless. An adult
beetle doesn't do any eating, but leaves sixteenth inch diameter
holes in cigars' wrappers as it emerges from the pupal casing
and tunnels to the outside world. Sometimes a larva or adult
burrows crosswise through several adjacent cigars ... real cute.
Although some say cellophane tubed cigars aren't affected, the
beetle has been known to punch right through metal foil
packaging, so don't count on this remedy. Also, adult beetles
can not only affect cigars in one box, but can fly between open
boxes of cigars in the same room, a troubling thought. |
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The female lays pearl white, oval eggs in the
crevices of tobacco. This concealing location, and the eggs'
small size ... 1/50 inch ... makes them virtually impossible to
spot. The hatched larva, or grub, is 1/6 inch long, curved,
fleshy and yellow white with pale brown heads and short legs.
Tobacco dust and its droppings clinging to its long, silky,
light brown hairs, impart a fluffy look. After several weeks of
lunching on your lonsdales, it hibernates, wrapping itself in a
cocoon of food and waste products, cemented by its own
secretions. Even if removed from the cocoon, a pupa can mature
to adulthood, assuming it doesn't dry out, and dislodged pupae
can be sometimes seen as they are shaken out of leaves during
handling. The adult is a uniform reddish yellow or reddish
brown, about 1/10 inch long. The broad head with small eyes is
bent down at almost a right angle to the body, Quasimodo like.
Unlike him, it can fly. |
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Lasioderma flourishes in temperate to tropical
climates, but artificial heat in warehouses and factories has
expanded its habitat northward. Buildings for processing and
storage of tobacco are usually claptraps, offering plenty of
cracks and crevices in which the beetle thrives. In these
buildings, workers may introduce live steam, dilute ammonia,
gasoline, or carbon disulfide into hiding places to keep the
population knocked down. A more effective fumigant than carbon
disulfide is hydrocyanic gas. Both have the advantage of being a
gas, not a spray or dust, so no residue taints the tobacco or
causes health problems. Their disadvantage is that they'll drop
a grown factory worker as quickly as a beetle. Carbon disulfide,
moreover, has the drawback of being explosive. Manufacturers
store leaf tobacco in areas sealed off from handling and aging
areas, and cover in process tobacco with screening nightly to
thwart egg laying. Factories use large suction fans to vacuum
the flying adult insects into traps, or hang flypaper by the
square yard and tack it onto window sills, a favorite beetle
hangout. Steam, incidentally, has been used in the past on leaf
tobacco itself with good results, although care is necessary to
avoid blanching the leaves and rendering them as flavorful as
iceberg lettuce. |
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The tobacco has made its long journey from field
to your store, and now the ball ... or more accurately, the bug
... is in your court. Preventing beetle activity is always
preferable to correcting its eruption. A popular beetle myth is
that the eggs don't hatch at temperatures below 75EF. Wrong. The
US Department of Agriculture advises its entire growth cycle
will occur, slowed but not stopped, at temperatures above 65EF,
assuming the humidity is above 40%. Not good news, since we keep
the temperature at 68 70EF, maintaining proper relative humidity
levels of 70 72%, depending upon which school of thought you
subscribe to as to the ideal RH. (Smokeshop magazine,
March/April, 1996, carried an article on environmental
monitoring and control, including a comprehensive discussion of
the relationship between temperature and humidity.) To your
advantage, most cigars are fumigated south of the border, and
devoid of the bug when they reach you. |
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Even so, let's say you suspect an outbreak of
hungry beetle larvae is in progress. First, recognize that all
cigars are suspect and you might have Lasioderma in your humidor
as we speak ... it's a fact of cigar life. Bugs will be bugs ...
just one infested cigar can lead to others, but only if cigars
stay in your humidor long enough to hatch an adult, which can
lay eggs in other cigars. So, don't panic if you see a hole here
or there. |
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But, assume a serious infestation hits. Quick
... what are your options? Call the guy in the Toyota pickup
with a termite on top with springy antennae? Don't bother. With
the EPA and OSHA overseeing the use of pesticides, hydrocyanic
gas or carbon disulfide are no longer permitted in the US. Plus,
the pest technician may or may not know what to use on this
particular species. Insecticides based on pyrethrum (from
chrysanthemum flowers) must be fogged, which leaves a
sickeningly sweet smell on your cigars; pheromone traps ... the
other popular remedy ... only gets the flying adult. So, neither
works. What's more, the USDA biologist advised Lasioderma not
only thrives on tobacco, spices, rice, dog food, and the paste
that binds books, it also savors ... ready for this? ...
pyrethrum! That's right, it eats insecticide base. If Hollywood
wants a new, unstoppable sci fi monster, why not the tobacco
beetle!? |
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Smokeshop, January/February, 1998, featured a
profile on Inter Continental Cigar Corporation. It described
their usage of cold storage for eradicating Lasioderma, and
serves as a paradigm for effective pest control. If you ever
need to chill an infestation, here's how. Immediately put every
cigar (and in your humidor to your kitchen freezer. Wrap them in
vapor barrier freezer wrap, the metallized mylar kind that is
absolutely air and moisture tight. Regular plastic won't cut it.
Use a similarly vapor proof tape to seal them. Remember, it's a
Sahara in a freezer, as all the humidity is frozen on the walls
or has run off into drain pans. With any leaks whatsoever, your
cigars will dry out. Leave them in the freezer ... set to the
coldest temperature you can ... for at least two or three days.
(If you have a walk-in's worth of cigars ... too much for your
home freezer, take them to a cold-storage locker facility. Tell
the freezer man to take the packages to 20 below zero
Fahrenheit, and keep them there for at least 24 hours. Next,
leave them at 0 F for two or three days.) Then slo o owly bring
the temperature up to ambient over a period of two days, to
prevent cracking the wrappers with thermal shock. Ideally,
remove the mylar vapor seal from the cigars only when the
ambient humidity is low, so moisture from the atmosphere doesn't
collect on their wrappers, which can mottle or pucker them. It
can also warp the covers on the cigar boxes. Follow this
procedure at your own risk, although a beetle beachhead calls
for immediate, radical action. |
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While the cigars are vacationing in the cold
storage facility, thoroughly scrub down your humidor. The beetle
breeds in tobacco dust and its own refuse, so you need to sweep
and dust the place out meticulously. Next, wipe every surface
with a strong ammonia/water mixture, and let it get into the
cracks, joints, and everywhere else it might hang out. Ammonia
not only does a job on the little brute ... and your sinuses ...
it leaves no smell to affect your cigars. When you have thawed
the cigars and are ready to restock them, inspect them as best
you can ... sometimes made difficult by the cellophane on the
sticks ... and toss out any that show evidence of infestation,
like holes in the wrapper. |
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As mentioned in the Inter Continental Cigar
Corp. article, storing cigars at a temperature below 65EF
suspends beetle activity in all stages of the pest ... if you
live in the North and can store your extra cigars in your garage
or shed, it's ideal for protection. Just be sure to vapor wrap
them. Brutally cold winter weather can kill them dead if the
cigars are stored in an outbuilding for several days. |
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Mold
Mold on cigars is secondary only to beetles as the most
pernicious of cigar contaminants. You can't kill it, you can
only prevent it. It results from elevated humidity at
temperatures above about 75EF for some time ... the standard
formula for growing mildew. Mold on cigars can occur as quickly
as three days after they are rolled, but usually doesn't appear
until some time later, such as in your hands. |
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The US Department of Agriculture ran a research
study on what caused cigars to mold. They were interested in the
fact that the usual symptom was a concentration at the head of
cigars. Veins and other elevated portions were the next most
commonly affected spots on the wrappers, though in some cases,
spots appeared at random over entire wrappers. The suspected
source was the gum tragacanth the cigar rollers used to seal the
caps. This natural product of the tragacanth tree is the
traditional gum of choice, because it is taste and odor free,
and works well as a cap sealant. |
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Gum tragacanth is a white powder, which is mixed
with water in about a 10% concentration, forming a gelatinous
paste. When rollers seal the caps at cigars' heads, they touch
their fingertips into a pot of paste, smear it lightly on the
tobacco flaps that become the caps, lay the caps, and then roll
the finished cigars on their cutting boards with the flat of
their chavetas, or cutting knives. As they do, small amounts of
tragacanth paste on the caps may smear across the cutting
boards. When the rollers lay the next wrapper leaves on the
boards, some paste sticks to the outside of those wrappers,
contaminating them. |
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In extended term studies, the USDA questioned
whether moist wrapper leaves themselves were the source of the
mold contamination. Although damp wrapper leaves can mold under
dark conditions, it did not explain the degree to which the
problem manifested itself. Moreover, the two most common species
of mold found on cigars could not be found on wrapper leaf,
absent the presence of external contaminants. |
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Experimentation revealed that gum tragacanth in
the paste pots contained mold that supported growth in Petri
dish cultures under laboratory conditions ... elementary
investigatory work. Remedial measures seemed best directed at
sterilizing the tragacanth paste in the pots. |
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The characteristics of the sterilizing medium
should include permanence, to prevent subsequent mold growth;
freedom from odor and taste; and no alteration of the appearance
of the wrapper. Furthermore, the solution should not saturate
easily, because water will evaporate from the pots over time,
and a saturated solution could result in crystals on the wrapper
surface, which could themselves look like mold. The remedy was
to substitute a mixture of boric acid, one ounce to one and
three quarters pints of distilled water, for the water that
rollers used to mix the gum tragacanth. Boric acid met all the
requirements, with one caution: it was necessary to be sparing
with the paste on the cap, because smears of it could
crystallize, as mentioned. Other than that, the stuff is safe as
mother's milk ... people use it as an eyewash. |
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This study, and a follow up of several years at
one factory, indicated complete success in eliminating mold. The
year was 1900. Last week, I asked three rollers at a factory in
Miami what they used to make their tragacanth paste. Their
unanimous response: "Just water." Sigh ... |
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I previously thought that if mold appears on a
cigar's wrapper, it was futile to wipe it off, because spores
are on all tobacco, and therefore, the interior leaf would
likewise be contaminated, resulting in a mildew taste
reminiscent of your granny's fruit cellar. Not tre ... it
appears mold is limited to wrapper, and can thus be simply wiped
off with a damp cloth or camel's hair brush ... tedious, but
effective, work. |
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© Copyright Coast Creative Services 1998
Reprinted from Smokeshop magazine, with permission from author
Dale Scott |
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"Ancestral
Cuban seeds grow the world's finest cigars™" |
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