Now I know why my performing clothes get moth eaten, all that engrained sweat;-) Must get a new tutu.

Seems that mothballs are no longer needed and with confused moths who would need balls anyway......

And would GWB and TB call this a weapon of moth destruction???

Moths foiled by sexual confusion at the opera
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
(Filed: 20/06/2005)

A technique that confuses clothes moths about their sexuality has made a dramatic difference to the storage of ballet and opera costumes at Covent Garden.

Rather than killing the moths, the new technique prevents the moths from breeding, thereby stopping damage done by the moths' larval stage.


Damage by moths was costing the Royal Opera House tens of thousands of pounds a year in repairs

The traps installed for the Royal Opera House make male clothes moths appear to other males as females, by sticking female pheromones to their bodies.

In a plot that could have come from an opera, males attempt to mate with the false females, but do not succeed.

Until the new pheromone traps were pioneered by Exosect, a company with close links to Southampton University, moths were costing the Royal Opera House tens of thousands of pounds a year.

The worst affected are ballet dancers' costumes, which get engrained with sweat, clothes moths' favourite taste.

The Royal Opera House has around 2,000 costumes at Covent Garden at any one time, some of which are more than a century old.

   
The pheromone traps work by stopping the moths laying eggs
Its archive includes the red dress Maria Callas wore in Tosca and costumes made for a stage band in a 1902 production of La Boheme.

Up to 750,000 more costumes are in permanent storage in South Wales.

"If you put something away for five to 10 years, it can come out with not a lot left," said Corrinne Jones-Lord, head of costumes and wigs.

Mending moth damage is one of the reasons why the Royal Opera House employs 13 full-time seamstresses. Covent Garden's new centrally heated and air conditioned extension made the problem worse because it was a more welcoming environment to the moth.

Mrs Jones-Lord said the pheromone traps were the best system because they worked by stopping the moths laying eggs.

But the problem has not gone away because eggs can lie dormant for two years before hatching.

Once installed, the system costs the Opera House about £10,000 a year, a relative bargain, given that this is the price of half a dozen specially-designed costumes.

The Exosect CLM technique, known as auto-confusion, has been developed to tackle codling moths and other pests of apple and pear orchards, but has yet to be developed into a treatment for moths in the home.