How to get rid of pantry beetles

Infestations result from either infested grains or infested processed products that are introduced into the home, storage facility, or processing plant. Most people bring pantry beetles into homes in infested food items. They can also come inside through open doors and windows or breaks in walls.

Vinegar solution for the win

If you have been looking for organic ways on how to eliminate small ants in the kitchen, make a 50% solution of vinegar and spray it all over your house. While this does not cause any damage to your family or pets, the pungent odor of the vinegar will keep ants and other small pests at bay.

Rice Weevils

Weevils are a type of beetle that eats plants. These dark brown, winged insects can spoil entire bins of grains. Rice weevils attack more than just rice. They also feed on corn, wheat, cereal, nuts, and even apples and pears.

So will pantry moths or their larvae, eggs and webbing make you sick if you accidentally eat them? The experts say no. So, if you ingest them, don’t panic. Indian meal moths are not known to spread any known diseases, parasites or pathogens.

White vinegar is also known to kill pesky pantry weevils. After rinsing your shelves with soapy water, wipe them down with white vinegar to prevent a future infestation from occurring.

After applying Pyrid to your breaks and crevices, apply Flex 10-10. Flex 10-10 is a pyrethroid insecticide that has a residual effect of up to 30 days that will kill Flour Beetles long after application.

If you eat flour with weevils they are unlikely to harm you, so don’t be too concerned if you’ve used the contaminated product beforehand. If you’re using products in baking, the high temperatures would help to have made the flour safe to eat.

Flour beetles (Tribolium sp.)

Flour beetles are common kitchen pests that infest milled cereal products. Adults can live up to one year. Females lay between 450 eggs among the foodstuff or on grain kernels. The small, slender, white eggs hatch in 5 to 12 days.

It does not feed on intact whole grains, but feeds on many processed food products such as breakfast food, bran, dried fruits, nuts, sugar, chocolate and macaroni. It is especially fond of oatmeal and birdseed.

How Did I Get Flour Beetles? Flour beetles feed on the broken bits and dust from grain that collect in bags of grains, flour, cereal, and pasta. The pests usually get inside packaging at warehouses or grocery stores and are then brought into homes inside these infested products.

Freeze and kill it: It is advised to keep packets of spices and flour in the freezer for four days as soon as you have bought it. You can do this to flour, oats, cookies, corn meal, and spices. This will kill all the larvae and eggs (if) present inside the packet and will stop further infestation.

Both are serious pests of cereal products, including grain, flour porridge oats and rice bran. Other products which may be effected are oil seed, oil cake, nuts, dried fruit, spices, chocolate – even bones and other animal products. The beetles are not cold hardy so they will only over winter in heated premises.

Do Flour Beetles Bite? While flour beetles do possess mouthparts, they do not usually bite humans or pets but red flour beetles can cause allergic reactions that cause wheals or raised red, itchy welts that can be mistaken for flour beetle bites.