At least as shocking and certainly no less revolting than mould on your cigars, is the appearance of little creatures crawling around in your humidor. There are, however, important differences in appearance, which divide them into two groups. On the one hand there are very small, ca 0.5 mm large, milky-white crawling dots, usually not lone animals, but appearing as groups; and on the other hand, approximately two to four millimetre long, oval, brownish-red or brownish-yellow, crawling beetles covered in thick greyish-brown hairs.

MITES

If what you see are the milky-white creatures, then you are dealing with the so-called storage or groceries

mite, with the fear-inducing scientific name Lepidoglyphus destructor. This is, however, a common household

dust mite, which is not harmful to cigars since its main food source is mould. However, before you start

getting ideas about breeding these mites and letting them loose on mould-infested cigars…The storage mite requires temperatures of between 3 and 34 °C to grow, and a relative air humidity of over 60 per cent, or moisture level within a solid of over 15 per cent as the case may be, so, naturally, the humidor constitutes the ideal habitat. However, since the moisture level of a cigar is usually only about 12 per cent they are not the favourite home of the mites, which prefer to scurry about the humidor or the cigar box and not to crawl into the cigar – what luck! While it is true that the mite is not harmful to the cigars, the fact that it feeds on mould and therefore spreads this means that you should check the cigars affected carefully.

These little creatures rarely occur as individuals, but rather in small colonies that populate the surface of the cigars or the walls of the humidor. It is really quite spectacular. The fact that the mites almost always appear in large numbers has led to suspicions that eggs are introduced into the boxes in the wrapping paper during the packing process, allowing them to develop and hatch there. If your cigars are affected by mites, simply brush them off, - wipe the box out carefully and check for mould.

My 2001 Partágas Limitadas had a really bad case of mite infestation. Even after brushing them off repeatedly and freezing the cigars (in the box) at minus 24 °C…nothing seemed to work, although these little creatures are usually extremely sensitive to temperature. It did not seem to matter what I did, the beasts kept reappearing. But then, suddenly, after repeated weekly brushing there was an end to it; the cigars have been free of mites ever since, and they have neither holes nor any other damage. So, if you get a mite infestation do not panic.

Of course, you could use chemicals to get rid of storage mites, gaseous acaricides (nitrogen, carbon dioxide or hydrogen phosphide) for example, or sulfuryl difluoride, but that would be rather overshooting the mark.

CIGAR BEETLES

If, instead of scurrying white dots, you see small brown beetles in your humidor or in the cigar box, then it is time to switch to red alert. In this case the parasite you are dealing with is Lasioderma serricorne L. and this is a problem, because the tobacco beetle larvae eat the tobacco and turn your cigars into flutes.

The young larvae are yellowish in colour, hairy and pretty sprightly. Older larvae can grow up to four millimetres long, are creamy-white and move very little. The time taken to develop from young larva to adult beetle can be anything from 70 to 120 days, depending upon temperature and the availability of food. The larvae are only able to reproduce on tobacco because symbionts in their intestines are able to break down and thereby detoxify the nicotine. The pupa rest in a kind of cocoon made from particles of tobacco and faeces glued together with saliva.