You reach into the cabinet for a bag of flour and notice tiny holes in it. The flour looks grey and smells terrible. You probably have an army of flour beetles devouring flour inside. Red, sawtoothed, and confused flour beetles are different species in the same family. They can feast on just a few grains of wheat, flour, or other grains. They can eat through paper and plastic paper bags, and some can chew through aluminum foil.
Flour bugs — also called rice bugs, pantry weevils, flour worms, or wheat bugs — are tiny beetles that feed on the dry food in your pantry. Flour, rice, cereal, pasta, and cake mixes are all favorites of these minuscule foodies.
But unlike other pantry pests that eat your dry goods and leave, flour bugs like to mate while they eat and then lay eggs in your flour. The eggs hatch and baby weevils carry on eating and mating in your food.
There are a couple of ways flour beetles access your home. Female beetles lay eggs in the wheat kernel in the field, and occasionally those eggs survive the milling process and end up in the bag of flour you bought from the store. The eggs hatch and the larvae begin the cycle of eating and mating.
The second way flour beetles make their way in is through cracks, gaps, and holes in the walls and windows of your home. They find a bag of flour, or other food, and begin the cycle.
DIY or Hire a Professional for Flour Beetle Removal
Have you found flour beetles in your home? You might be able to clear the infestation if you carefully work to isolate the infested food products and throw them out. If you want to stop an infestation and even save your food, you can freeze your food for at least four days or heat your food in the oven at 125 degrees for an hour. This will kill those flour beetles in all stages of development and stop the pest activity. You’ll need to sift through all the food and find the beetles and larvae. Even still, once you’ve isolated the infestation, you must use a vacuum to clean your pantry and food-storage cabinets. Pay close attention to crevices. Flour beetles lay their eggs in nooks, crannies, and tight spaces around a food sources.
The list of food these insects can infest is quite a long, but they do have foods they prefer. Some more common items are cereal, spices, coffee, nuts, dried fruit, chocolate, and flour.
When you find flour beetles in your cupboard or pantry, know that they can be challenging to get rid of. If flour beetles have already laid eggs in the cracks and gaps around your food products in your pantry, you might be going through a lot of work getting rid of contaminated products and vacuuming the area, only to end up with more food getting infested because your vacuuming didn’t get all the eggs. This is why it is best to hire a professional pest control provider, like Icon Pest.
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Contact Icon Pest for Flour Beetle Removal Today!
Call us at (647) 325 9060 or email us at info@iconpest.ca today to get a free estimate! If you are ready to tackle your flour beetle problem immediately, we proudly offer same-day service.
We also offer cluster fly removal, ant removal, cockroach removal, rat removal, mice removal, bed bug removal, carpenter ant removal, wasp and hornet removal, and commercial pest control.