Imagine the bug you see to the left, only shrunk down to the size of an alfalfa seed. A tiny, reddish-brown alfalfa seed. Have you ever seen those on your countertops or in your cupboards? Occasionally you may notice them flying around, too.
They're called grain beetles, and they're quite common. From their name, you'd imagine that they like to live in containers of flour, cereal, or rice, and you'd be right. But we recently conquered an infestation (not that hard, actually) and we learned a few things, including a very surprising place they like to nest. You may want to start poking around your pantry when you read this.
We started noticing these little bugs a few months ago, but we thought they might be flying in from outside. We weren't worried about our food supply; after all, we keep our grains in zip-top bags and corral small ones in sealed plastic containers.
Eventually, though, the bugs seemed to multiply. We noticed them flying around the kitchen and spotted a few on the ceiling. Time to act. We asked the exterminator who stops by our building once a month to come over, and he immediately deduced that we had grain beetles. He said they like to nest in our flour and rice. He squirted a bit of insecticide in the corners of the cabinets and told us to clean them out and toss old food.
We didn't think we really had any old food; all of our bags of rice, oats, and flour seemed perfectly fine. Until we spotted an old, half-sealed box of Bisquick on the top shelf. Bullseye. It, along with an old box of cornstarch, were the party palaces for the grain beetles. So we threw them out, then removed everything from the cabinets and wiped them down with a soapy sponge.
So far, so good. We haven't seen any grain beetles since.
But hear this: We have a friend who had a grain beetle episode at the same time, and her exterminator immediately zoned in on her spices. He said old spices are an often overlooked spot where grain beetles like to flourish. They found a real zoo underneath her oregano, paprika, cumin... Yet another reason to toss old spices that have lost their zing.
Anyone else dealt with grain beetles in the past? Any tips?
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Are these the same things as "pantry moths"? If so, I had an minor infestation recently (do those two words go together!?!?!) -- but a thorough cleaning followed with moth traps seems to have done the trick.
grr, weevils! they're so frustrating. i think if you pop your flour/cornmeal/bisquick etc in the freezer for like an hour when you get it, that should do the trick. i haven't fully rid my kitchen of them yet, as i just realized last night.
The friend who had grain beetles under her spices... how did she store her spices? Were they in glass bottles? (If so, then I'm REALLY creeped out.)
My mom always swore that a bay leaf stored with flour and other dry ingredients would keep bugs away. Just lay it on the shelf next to the containers; you don't have to keep it in the flour itself. I'm not sure if it really works or not, but I've always done it, and never had a problem with bugs, even in a hardly-weathertight apartment in Louisville, KY next to a park with loads of bugs around.
*shrug*
The last infestation I had was in my spices, including inside a METAL canister of paprika, and in my turmeric, and chili powder. I was actually using the turmeric for weeks with the bugs in it, thinking they were stray mustard seeds, that had rolled in from the adjacent tin of mustard seeds (I have one of those Indian spice boxes with open metal cups to hold spices. Ummmmm...nope. Not mustard seeds. These were moving.
Yep, ours started with a half used box of grits. We don't use them often, so that's where they headed.
I pulled the box down to make them and the picture of the grits on front of the box looked like it had black pepper flakes on it. Looking closer, those were holes that the bugs had eaten through the box.
We threw most everything out at that point. We're much more cautious now.
Every now and then, yes. I once found a thick, dead layer of them in the red pepper flakes. I guess that was TOO spicy! Weirdly, they once hatched in the walnuts! I think they ride in on something or other--a bag of flour maybe--and then migrate into whatever looks tasty to them. At least they're easy to get rid of.
@Joan A--for me, yes, in glass bottles.
Nothing is worse than finding the maggots in your rice. After you've cooked it and served it.
EUUUUUUUU yes.
I had them a year or two ago, and the spices were it! Opening up a metal tin to find it crawling with zillions of bugs was and shall remain one of the single grossest kitchen events I have EVER experienced. It still makes my skin crawl to think of it.
They were in just about everything except the cayenne pepper.
Here's the thing...I am just about 100% positive that they came from spices to begin with. Poppy seeds, actually. So now always keep those in the freezer.
The other thing is THEY CAN EAT THROUGH ZIPLOCK BAGS. I have always kept cornmeal, etc. in their container or bag and then in a ziplock, and I found very clear evidence of this. Tiny little round holes with correpsonding little holes through the container. I repeat, EU!!!
Wow, man.
We had an infestation of tiny moths (I'm not sure their technical name) from stowaways that came along in bulk natural pet food last summer.
It was awful.
They got into pretty much any grain-type item in the kitchen, including a package of hazelnuts which almost went into a batch of brownies I was making (this was how I discovered the problem.) I found them in the cake flour, cornmeal, oats, barley... pretty much was suspect at that point. We threw out everything, cleaned obsessively, and began storing dry foods double bagged, clipped and in tightly sealed glass jars, or in the fridge/freezer. This has worked reasonably well but we get random moths flying around still and haven't found where they're living.
I'm paranoid now and always inspect items before using them. I look for any movement from wriggling or flying as well as fine spiderweb like fibers.
Now we're gettng ready to move and have to make extra sure that none of the random moths we still see come along. They are not welcome at the new house!!
We do not buy bulk pet food anymore. It's just not worth it.
I've had problems with pantry moths. I've read that freezing flours for 4 days will kill any of the so many parts per billion that are legally in stuff brought home from the store. So any grains and Bisquick go into the freezer for at least 4 days when I buy it, and that seems to have done the trick. I also put things like Bisquick and cake flour into quality, heavy duty zip top bags.
@splatgirl: They eat through plastic?! Ugh! That explains why I had moths in my hazelnuts and maggoty-things in my clif bar.. which I promptly threw away.
Weevils! Ah yes I know oh too fondly of those little bugs. We constantly had them growing up. My mom to this day bans us from putting flour in the pantry- she puts it in the freezer.
The worst I found was in bags of crab boil spice (imagine how fun it is to drop a few bags of those spices in your stockpot only to see little black, spice looking things float to the top of the water!) and if you have a bird. They LOVE birdseed. We never had trouble getting rid of them. Just threw away the contaminated dry goods and they disappeared.
Now you want to talk about horrid and a terror to get rid of, lets talk fruit flies!
I can say with certainty that they can eat through a plastic ziplock bag, yes. Whether it's to get in or out, I'm not sure, but I've had this happen on more than one occasion with cornmeal/grits and flour in a ziplock. They make tiny little round holes just like those you'd find in the paper package.
I am also suspicious of dried chiles as the source, so those are stored in the freezer now, too. I know for a fact they'll eat these.
EU again.
Yuck! again, the spices were the culprit in my kitchen. I had a particularly horrifying episode where I sprinkled a freshly made bowl of soup with crushed chillies, only to discover I was sprinkling little bugs too! one look in the bottle and it was crawling with them, ug! put me off crushed chillies for a while - good tip to keep them in the freezer - I'll do that from now on.
Weirdly, the were in a glass jar, with a hard plastic lid, I assumed the eggs were already in there when I bought??
Oh, I've had those things alright! They migrated in with a bag of oatmeal. For the longest time, I kept everything in glass jars. Now I use plastic containers that have a pretty good seals on them. Although I still very occasionally find a few bugs, at least they are isolated and don't infest everything in the pantry.
the last time i had a grain beetles was when i left a sealed container of popcorn kernels in the back of the pantry for months and months and months without touching it. eewww! since then, i do my best to buy quantities that will be used within a reasonable amount of time (month at the longest) and pop most of my flours in the freezer before use. i do have a pretty awesome bulk section to choose from, so i realize that this may not be an option. the other thing i try to do is use what is in my pantry before i go stocking it with more goodness.
there is a fine line between a well-stocked pantry and an over-stocked one.
and yes, i just checked my entire pantry critters. seems alright, but now i can stop itching. thanks! ;)
YES. We recently conquered a small infestation. They love CORN! They were in my corn flour and polenta. Little bastards.
For us, it seems that these little buggers always arrived in a box of dog biscuits. Treating newly bought dog treats with a weeks stay in the freezer seems to have solved the problem.
They love grains and spices - keep all in the freezer or fridge and they die. After the infestation that spread to my closet due to me not emptying the vacuum cleaner after using it on the cabinets, I keep only canned goods and wet condiments in the cupboards, everything else is in the freezer or fridge.
Yusm I hate those bugs.
That was supposed to be yuck, not yusm!
Thanks for the tips about freezing... I'm definitely going to do that! Does this technique require any special defrosting/methods to bring to usable temps, or is it pretty much good to go?
I've had grain beetle episodes plenty of times and it usually stops at the kitchen - some old flour or or other grain. However, I recently cleaned out my kitchen and still saw them flying around the house. Guess where they were to my horror? A buckwheat eye pillow that I keep in my nightstand and in a sealed jar of dried lavender that I occasionally used in my bath! I have also seen grain beetles invade very old chocolate. Most people don't leave chocolate around for very long. This particular stash was left in an old office drawer.
Huh, am I really the only one to comment on this or is everyone furiously cleaning out their cabinets? We've had problems with these buggers for years. Hopefully you got them early, cause they're pretty insidious. We freeze all grains (cereals included) for at least 8 hours, usually 24 hours to kill any eggs/bugs already in them. Easier to do this when you bring in a new grain than to have to find a way to freeze an entire pantry. There are also traps you can put out that attract the males so they won't mate.
I swear the other 26 comments were not here when I posted!
I recently had a pantry moth infestation. Found out what they were when it was clearly much too late. I actually think they came in bulk rice that was stored inside a glass jar! I've since found one that made its way into a glass jar and cocooned on the jar lid threads.
Threw out everything that was dried/grain/cereal. I read online that they would cocoon in any type of crevice so had to do a very extensive clean search. I found some in a basket. I found a few in cupboard corners. I am sure I missed some and still see the occasional one. It's made me buy much smaller portions in bulk and use what I have before I bring in new.
Argh. We got these once--they came to us in a box of Cheez-its.
AHHH! I had those under my oven! I flipped my shizz, thinking they were roach larva. I never would have known otherwise, had you not posted this. Ew! Glad I have everything sealed up in the pantry.
My dad always just shrugged his shoulders and said they were protein
...as my mom threw out every box of grain type food.
But actually, she ended up buying Tupperware and pyrex containers to store the grain boxes, and we never had another problem.
My wife and I had these last spring. Probably from some organic flour or something like that.
They were EVERYWHERE. They were in unopened boxes, bags, jars.
We had to throw absolutely everything away. The only thing we could keep was a small jar of salt. Also, after the pest control was here there was bugs left for about six weeks.
I don't wish this upon my worst enemy.
A trick most people use in India to store spices (everybody buys them once a year - during apr/may and store them for a year because that's the peak and best season)-
1. store them in air tight glass bottles (almost manic obsession with cleaning and drying them before you put the spices in)
2. add "rocks" of asafoetida (not powder form)
I've had pantry moths once...from a bag of dried chilis. And I've had the maggot rice experience...fortunately I saw them BEFORE I started cooking the rice but for awhile I was almost too grossed out to eat rice altogether. Now I routinely check my grains and keep flour in the freezer in a freezer bag.
Now I feel like I need to go do another inspection but after skimming the comments, am a little skeeved out to look. Will wait until my husband is home (less scary that way??).
Are these the mothy things that make a puff of dust when you kill them? Then yes, I've had these, and they came from a plastic bag of cornmeal mix.
Scuse me, barfing.
I think this post will finally convince my husband that yes, I do actually need canisters for my flour and other dry goods. Having a five-pound bag of sugar sitting open on the counter all day after he needs a teaspoon for his tea... euuuugh. No beetles for me, thanks!
Eww...The worst was years ago when I'd made soup for my then boyfriend and he stopped because he saw something crawling on the cracker he was eating.
I do get them from time to time in my current kitchen, and they're a real pain to eradicate from my deep corner cabinets.
We used to buy rice in bulk and store it in clear, hard plastic containers. We had no idea grain beetles existed, so imagine our surprise when we found tiny black bugs crawling about. Amazing how they can survive in a container without fresh air. Needless to say, we don't buy in bulk anymore!
Spices? Oh, god, I'm getting the creeps from that. We had a problem with some sort of moth a few months ago and I started getting serious about putting any open starch into airtight containers. That seemed to get rid of the problem, though. But I don't think what we had could eat through plastic, since I didn't do anything with unopened plastic packaging. Now I am terrified that they're still there, just hiding better.
I have just tossed a container full of almonds :( . Thanks for your post, it has made more aware! I think I'll better store them in the fridge from now on.
ucky eweewwee I just had an outbreak of the little buggers recently, and I think I got them. They were in cornmeal this time. I have also had them come in farina, but the worst was when I was buying cereal at a liquidation place and stored a bunch in a cedar chest in my bedroom for awhile. By the time I figured out where they were coming from they were in my light fixtures!! It was awful! When I opened the cedar chest and saw the cereal moving in the bags, from the distance I was at, I screamed. My ex-husband had to deal with them. Hmmm.... remembering how he dealt with that issue really helps me forgive him for a few of his shortcomings...
I recently found out that they'd gotten into my turbinado sugar... I hadn't used it in a little while, but put some into a cup of tea that I'd just brewed. And then after I'd drank about half of the cup, discovered one of them clinging to the inside of my cup!! Needless to say, I threw out the rest of the box (after I'd checked to see if the beetles were actually in the sugar, and not the tea. After all, I'd just gotten the canister of tea in the mail two days before, and I've never had a bug problem with the company!) And got a new cup of tea. After I washed the cup out.
i didnt have time to read all the comments so i dont know if any one mentioned this.
i am a pest control technician and we see this all the time. the come from the grocery store. as gross as that sounds its a fact of life. they have millions of pounds of food coming in from all over the country so its going to happen. if you ever happen to find them in packages that you have hardly used or if you have gotten half way through a package...take it back to the store. they know this happens are are usually understanding. also for all you people who shop at sun harvest or whole foods and get your food from the wholesale barrels, beware! more often than not that has been the source of our customers problems. the little "displays" that are above the containers of like 100 year old whatever its showcasing us usually infested with grain worms or beetles, and in turn will end up in what ever it is you are buying. i saw that someone asked before if the moths are the same thing. they are and they arent. the moths come from a grain worm (there is a more professional name for them but i cant think of it right now) they live in the bottom of cardboard boxes, in bag seals, or in the food its self. they hatch in the food and feed and then they change in to the pain in the ass moths. the best advice i have is what has already been said....check EVERYTHING! even if its not opened it is a suspect. even when you think you thought of everything CHECK AGAIN! 9 times out of 10 our customers say "oh no i have checked everything!!" we tell them check again and make sure you check all the other cabinets too! and sure enough there is always something that has been over looked! if any one has any questions or anything i am a licensed technician so feel free to email me! vertigoxcured at gmail dot com!
Thanks, vertigoxcured! Another place you can get help ID'ing the little buggers is your local state agricultural extension offices or university department of entomology. Seal up the suspects in a plastic bag or jar and take it down to them. They'll ID bugs for free and give you some standard advice about control and prevention. Here's a sample sheet on grain beetles from Cornell's office: http://www.entomology.cornell.edu/cals/entomology/extension/idl/upload/Beetles-in-Flour-and-Meal.pdf
and one for the moths: http://www.entomology.cornell.edu/cals/entomology/extension/idl/upload/Indian-Meal-Moth.pdf
I found it in my oatmeal - luckily before I ate it. My mom had cleaned out her pantry, and to be nice gave me a bunch of it. There were some stowaways. Getting rid of the food did the trick. It wasn't as traumatic as it could have been, thankfully.
yikes! My mom just gave me a whole bunch of old spices. I guess she doesn't know about this, i'll have to tell her.
Oh man we had these in an infestation that seemed like it didn't end--although we also got told they were tobacco bugs, so I don't know. But the pattern was just like described above. They initially came in in a box of dog biscuits. We had to throw out almost everything in the kitchen and clean the whole place with bleach--they were even getting through the cardboard boxes/plastic bags around cake mixes and cereal! And then we had to do it all again a month later--we had missed the spices, thinking they were okay in their glass bottles. Finally got rid of them, now we use a lot more plastic and glass jars and containers and keep some things in the freezer. They were so gross, we kept finding them in lines, dead, on our windowsills.