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Tobacco beetles can not only eat your cigars down to dust, they can cost you a pretty penny. While not a new pest for cigar lovers, it is the leading insect that threatens stored tobacco. These critters do not discriminate. They will attack tobacco at any stage of manufacturing, up to retail and travel to your humidor.

Though it is the most common, the tobacco beetle is not the only predator that preys on tobacco. Several other insects such as the tobacco moth, the tobacco worm and at least 12 other species of insects feed on the plant. Many of these insects were trapped either in tobacco factories, warehouses or found on cigars left in room temperature inside homes.

The tobacco beetle, which is larger than the cigarette beetle, is mainly a tropical species. It is identical to the cigarette beetle except that it is larger and is black instead of brown. The tobacco beetle attacks cured tobacco in much the same way as the cigarette beetle. The tobacco moth is sometimes a serious pest of flue-cured tobacco on the farm, farmers say. Infestation may begin even in the curing barn and continue until the tobacco is marketed. Most damage occurs in the pack-house, where the tobacco is bulked before being graded. Infestation may develop from moths flying from commercial storages or farms nearby, or it may be already established on the farm and carried over from year to year in scrap tobacco, peas or beans, stock feeds or other host foods. Tobacco dealers and manufacturers constantly practice insect-control measures and maintains damage-free on insect infestations.

Having a humidor is not a guarantee as friend from Davie found out. Despite stashing away his stogies in his safe haven, he returned and found his Cubans with holes like a strainer. That’s because the illegal cigars were not properly cured and the insects were not destroyed before the cigars were put away, allowing them to multiply. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said. He lost hundreds of dollars on the coveted cigars “ For a while I thought someone had opened the humidor or I thought someone had sold me a dud.” But a friend explained to him that Cuban cigars are the most prone to developing beetles because they don’t fumigate their tobacco. The don’t take the same preventive measures as the other countries do. But if you do have Cuban Cigars beware!

Below are steps to eradicate tobacco bugs in your humidor and how to prevent them from returning.:

1. First, double bag all the cigars that were in the humidor with the contaminated cigars, even those which don’t have holes. They probably have eggs and larvae. You can also use tupperware containers. One inside the other (Because of the extra moisture produced by the freezing, the extra bag or container will act as a deterrent for the moisture the freezing might produce). In a regular frost free freezer the temperature should be 10 F. to 15 F. above Zero. If in a deep freezer the temperature should be -10 F. Keep the cigars in the regular freezer for 30 days and in the deep freezer for 15 days.

2. While the cigars are in the freezer, clean your humidor with a vacuum. Leave it empty and open for at least a week. The bugs will die without its food source, the tobacco.

3. When it is time to remove the cigars from the freezer, transfer them to the refrigerator for 24 hours. Then let your cigars reach room temperature as they sit outside for another day. Return your cigars to your humidor and humidify them again. Be patient, don’t try to speed up this process.

4. When ever you come across Cuban cigars freeze them immediately, following the steps above. Better safe than sorry.

Long ashes everyone.

If you love cigars–if you’re a true cigar aficionado–you probably deal with the Vacation Conundrum at about this time every year.
What’s the vacation conundrum? It’s the issue of which cigars to bring on your vacation.

After all, you don’t want to bring anything that could get crushed. (Long, thin cigars are just about ruled out by this principle.) Sure, most hardcore cigar aficionados have their own travel cigar humidors, which reduces the pressure to bring cigars that will go well in a suitcase; but you’ll want to keep a few out of the cigar humidor, in your carry-on or next-to-you-in-the-car baggage, in case an opportunity presents itself to take a quick smoke. (Who knows–you might fly through one of the handful of United States airports, most small-to-medium-sized and located in the South or Southwest, that still allow smoking in certain locations.) And those loose cigars that don’t go in the travel humidor? You don’t want anything that would be too easily destroyed.

And, of course, what if your in-transit smoke break is fleeting–as are most things in travel? For example, what if you fly through a smoke-tolerant airport with its own small lounge near the tarmac, but you only have twenty minutes before you have to catch your connecting flight?

And, even assuming that you’ve got a travel humidor to bring along–being the cigar aficionado you are–still, isn’t travelling itself fairly hectic? Won’t you want a cigar that’s perfect for those little interstices in the day: the fifteen minutes between getting back from lunch and leaving for the museum; the mini-siesta between the end of the day and the lingering dinner at a fine restaurant; the fifteen-minute walk to your next bus stop? When you’re travelling, is it really time to break out the fat Churchills? A premium cigar sampler full of the fattest cigars possible is really not what you want in your cigar humidor at this point.

All these reasons seem to conspire together to suggest the following temporary change to your normal smoking routine, whatever it is: when on vacation, smoke a small cigar. Cigars with a diminutive ring gauge, truncated length, and squatty, short construction make the best, most convenient companions on your travels–especially those cigars that have big taste in a short container! The problem is, your not-so-premium cigar makers have also figured out that most of us don’t have a lot of time for smoking, and they’ve accommodated by making big tins full of things that have the look and, to the untrained observer, the mystique of cigars but don’t have the construction, rich taste, or premium tobacco. Machine-rolled small cigars are often sold in little tins to cigar smokers on the go. But premium cigar aficionados will want to know if there are any hand-rolled premium cigars that they can buy instead. And thankfully, there are!

–Coming from one of the best-regarded premium cigar companies in the world, there’s the mild-tasting Macanudo Ascot.

–For an exotic taste, consider the Natural Jucy Lucy, with its Syrian and Turkish binders.

–Though it comes in a tin, like some well-known machine-made small cigars, there’s nothing tinny (or machine-made) about the taste of the brilliant H. Upmann Aperitif. A bulk purchase of these fine handmade premium discount cigars might have you wondering if your tastebuds are suffering from wishful thinking. They’re not.

–Acid Blondies, with their unique combination of tobaccos and their short, strong construction, make a strong possibility. (The slightly bell-shaped Acid Kong Cameroon makes another one.)

–The all-Nicaraguan CAO Criollo Pampas sells for under five dollars a stick.

–The pointy Don Tomas Cameroon Perfecto combines Mexican, Dominican and Brazillian tobaccos with a Cameroonian wrapper for taste perfection.
Better yet, build your own premium cigar sampler from all of these items–or still others! The kinds of travel-ready cigars you’re looking for will have a ring gauge under five.