The Listener
  • The Listener home
  • The Listener E-edition
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Health & nutrition
  • Arts & Culture
  • New Zealand
  • World
  • Consumer tech & enterprise
  • Food & drink

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • New Zealand
  • World
  • Health & nutrition
  • Consumer tech & enterprise
  • Art & culture
  • Food & drink
  • Entertainment
  • Books
  • Life

More

  • The Listener E-edition
  • The Listener on Facebook
  • The Listener on Instagram
  • The Listener on X

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Listener
Home / The Listener / World

Jane Clifton: Europe’s new pest threat - ants, bedbugs and moths run rampant

New Zealand Listener
10 Jul, 2025 06:00 PM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Undermining en masse: The Tapinoma magnum. Photo / Getty Images

Undermining en masse: The Tapinoma magnum. Photo / Getty Images

That old Frank Sinatra song High Hopes, in which a plucky lone ant moves a rubber tree plant, no longer seems quite so jolly. In Europe’s latest insect insurgency, ants in Germany have caused power cuts and extensively damaged public infrastructure.

Insects terrorising humans was a common theme of 1950s sci-fi movies but the modern reality here, while less scary, is literal devastation. There’s something both Hitchcockian and karmically dystopian about insects destroying human habitats rather than the other way round.

Germany’s ant immigrants are 4mm Tapinoma magnum, until recently found closer to the Mediterranean and North Africa. Germany has found them remarkably cold-tolerant settlers. Their mass-infiltration of building cavities and electrical circuitry boxes caused power cuts and wrecked a playground in the city of Kehl recently, and underground-dwelling colonies have lifted pavements near rail platforms in Karlsruhe.

They form super-colonies of around 20 million, happily merging with neighbouring underground settlements to cover many kilometres, hence their ability to undermine structures overhead.

As well as being heat tolerant, they survive heavy frosts. They repay squashing by exuding the smell of rancid butter. In any case, it’s not practical to squish 20 million ants, and scientists have yet to come up with a practical eradication method that would kill the colonies without endangering other creatures.

German municipal authorities have used boiling water with some success. But entomologists warn that householders need specialist help to eradicate them. They may look almost exactly like the common ant, but they’re tougher and exponentially more numerous. And they bite.

Serbia, France, Belgium, the UK and Azerbaijan have also unwittingly hosted new Tapinoma diasporas, thought to have arrived on Mediterranean garden plant imports. In Switzerland, they infested a potato plantation the size of five football pitches.

The ants join bedbugs and moths as vaultingly destructive domestic pests within the continent. The bedbug panic that emanated from Paris two years ago continues apace, with regular reports of European and British hotel customers claiming compensation for bite-disturbed sleep. They’re hard to spot, so some travellers take elaborate precautions with luggage, such as keeping all bags in the hotel bath, to avoid the risk of taking home any invertebrate souvenirs.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

It’s also increasingly common for clothes moths to eat people literally out of house and home. In a famous example, the daughter of a Georgian oligarch received a court-ordered refund earlier this year for most of the £32.5 million (NZ$73.6m) she paid for a mansion in London’s Notting Hill, because the vendor neglected to disclose its stubborn infestation of fabric-devouring Tineola bisselliella.

The moths’ larvae feed voraciously on natural fibres, and the lawsuit drew copious reports from other householders forced to move out and fumigate following wholesale loss of clothing and furnishings. Like the Tapinoma ants, they’re fiendishly difficult to evict. The Notting Hill house quickly became unfeasible to occupy, with all non-synthetic clothing and furnishing constantly holed and shredded.

Discover more

Jane Clifton: Éire odyssey

30 Jun 06:00 PM
Opinion

Jane Clifton: Call me Leo

24 Jun 06:00 PM

Jane Clifton: Say what?

18 Jun 06:00 PM

People swear by various folk remedies, from lavender to cedar balls, but most of the truly effective treatments – burning, arsenic and mothballs – are also harmful to humans and pets. It’s possible to freeze the larvae to death but not the eggs. Anyway, how many household freezers could accommodate a sofa? The best hope seems to reside in tiny parasitic wasps, Trichogrammatidae, which can be bought online. They eat the eggs, departing the household once their tucker runs out. The perfect guests.

Time and research will tell whether these heightened infestations are climate-related or something even more sinister, à la those old noir films.

But with reports that some Germans are so hypervigilant about keeping super ants at bay they dare not even go on holiday, can it be long before a smuggling trade develops for anteaters, armadillos and pangolins?

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from The Listener

Listener
Listener
ADHD, Autism or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder? Why the right diagnosis matters
Health

ADHD, Autism or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder? Why the right diagnosis matters

Hard facts about a leading cause of disability in NZ, and why it's often misdiagnosed.

09 Feb 07:04 PM
Listener
Listener
Cancer rising: Investigating the deadly increase in cancers in younger people
Health

Cancer rising: Investigating the deadly increase in cancers in younger people

27 Apr 06:00 PM
Listener
Listener
The truth about eggs: What’s really going on with shortages and soaring prices
Business

The truth about eggs: What’s really going on with shortages and soaring prices

16 Mar 04:00 PM
Listener
Listener
How Britain’s mental health burden is threatening its future
Andrew Anthony
OpinionAndrew Anthony

How Britain’s mental health burden is threatening its future

13 Jul 06:00 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Contact NZ Herald
  • Help & support
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
NZ Listener
  • NZ Listener e-edition
  • Contact Listener Editorial
  • Advertising with NZ Listener
  • Manage your Listener subscription
  • Subscribe to NZ Listener digital
  • Subscribe to NZ Listener
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotion and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • NZ Listener
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP