[goodoldreb]

Hi Folks: Our basement has been infested with little "worms" that are about an inch long, that curl up when they die. About a thousand of them have chosen our basement as their final resting place. While standing outside the other night, I noticed them crawling around on the concrete outside. Over the next couple of days, I spent about an hour getting them up off the entire basement floor with a shop vac. I cannot post a pic, but I will describe them the best I can. They are brown, sectional, with a hard shell. We live in N.GA, and it has been very hot and humid. Very rarely do we see any alive in the basement, but the floor is just covered with the curled up creatures.
Any ideas on how to prevent these little critters from getting in our basement?
Thanks in advance, GOR.

 

[agmantoo]

Those are millipedes
To discourage millipedes near the house, remove mulch and dead vegetation adjacent to the house. Outdoors, you may wish to treat a 10-15 foot strip around the house perimeter with an insecticide. Do not forget to treat the exterior basement wall, window frames and door sills. Carbamate insecticides (Baygon®, Ficam®, Sevin®) are recommended for outside control of millipedes because they are fast-acting.

Tempo is a good product for interior use.

 

[Cyngbaeld]

Here is a site with some info"

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2067A.html

Make sure you don't touch them without gloves. You can try a dehumidifier in the basement, that might help. Also, leaving a light on in the basement may discourage them from coming in.

 

[januaries]

I live in a basement that is infested with millipedes. The basement floods during every hard rain, so there's really no way to keep it dry and discourage the worms. They were particularly bad two summers ago (literally covered the floor); now they're just annoying-bad. Have to clean them out of my shower every morning. They stink. Haven't been able to kill them with poison--probably because I don't want to live surrounded by as much poison as it would take to kill them all. They're everywhere. Of course, the conditions outside the house are perfect for them as well. The owners of the house live upstairs, hate yardwork, and are accustomed to living in third-world conditions: nothing fazes them. So--good luck with your millipedes and be glad you don't live in the basement. And thanks for letting me gripe.

 

[Windy in Kansas]

I am of the opinion that the worms are what we called "wire worms". If the worm has many legs visible to the sides, then yes, they might be milipedes. If no legs are visible then I'd suspect wire worms instead.

The wireworm and wire worm photos I'm finding on the net are of the corn wireworm or click beetle, not what we called wireworms in Kansas.

I don't have an insect book at my disposal, but wireworms are pretty well considered harmless, just disgusting. We typically see them towards fall and they do like to come inside in damper areas such as basements.