What Causes Pantry Bugs
What causes pantry bugs? There is no home in which bugs or pests don’t reside, just as there is no White House nor even Buckingham Palace.
If you think getting rid of only roaches, silverfish or ants from your home is enough then again you’re absolutely wrong. Some bugs live and thrive at home in our kitchen and especially in our food.
They are known as the pantry pests. Food bugs or pantry pest or stored food pests – these common kitchen insects don’t like to hide far from their food source.
They are found easily in our kitchens cabinets, baker’s racks and even inside jars because they seek out dry processed foods as their favorite delicacies.
What Causes Pantry Bugs
Infestations are brought about by either infested grains or infested processed products that are introduced into the home, storage facility, or processing plant.
Or as in most cases, people bring pantry beetles into their homes in infested food items. They can also come inside through open doors and windows or cracks in walls.
Indian meal moths
Indian meal moths are one of the most common pantry pests in the world. Unlike other insect pests who are attracted to your kitchen only because there is a ready supply of food.
Indian meal moths will lay their eggs on top of the food you happen to leave out in your pantry not concerned whether it’s edible or not. If you do find these moths flying around your kitchen, kill them asap!
Use fly traps placed strategically about the floor beside high traffic areas. You should always avoid leaving any amount of dry pet food out – that’s an open invitation.
Beetles
Six kinds of beetles can infest your kitchen – the sawtooth grain beetle, the drugstore beetle, the cigarette beetle, the flour beetle, the warehouse beetle and the spider beetle.
The most common kind found in many homes is the flour beetle. As the name suggests, these insects often find their way into all kinds of flour. They can also infest shelled nuts and grains as well as other foods.
If you’ve got any food that stinks or if you see molds on it then there’s probably a problem! Flour beetles are known to plague dry fruits, cereals, nuts seeds and herbs as well as grains and chocolate too.
The drugstore beetles will happily attack books and tobacco products but they’ll also hurt processed meat so make sure you keep an eye out for them.
Weevils
There are two types of weevils which commonly infest rice storage areas – rice weevils, and bean weevils. The rice weevil is relatively large and slender compared to the bean weevil and has a small ‘snout’ with two small pincer-like appendages protruding from the base of this snout.
When in flight these weevils do not hold their wings completely flat out to either side when they are close to the ground like some beetles do, but instead angle them upwards at about a 45 degree angle.
Both of these types of insects go around within foodstuff looking for damp places where they can lay their eggs inside the grain husks or other food storage containers.
But don’t worry as there are several steps you can take at home to ensure that your stored grains remain protected from these pests (eg: placing whole grains in large glass jars with lids that have vents so you can air out your grain by removing the lid on occasion).
Mealworms
Mealworms are green or yellow – but only the larvae stage of their lives. They are caterpillars, which means they love eating plants, but at a much earlier stage in their growth cycle.
Mealworms can typically be found lying in a pile at the corner of your pantry or kitchen cabinets – surviving off any food you’ve left exposed for months several years back!
And you’ll know when mealworms have invaded the interior of your kitchen… there will be large swarms of these creepy crawlies slowly crawling over the tops of all your favorite food items.
Sound gross? It is! So why not keep your food covered once it’s been prepared to prevent mealworms (and thousands more like it) from getting inside and taking up residence on top of every single thing you own in the pantry.
Cockroaches
Pests have been a challenge for people ever since the beginning of time. Cockroaches happen to be one of those pests that are really hard to get rid of completely.
Not just because they are small and hard to see, but also because they can literally eat everything – no matter if it’s an old piece of food or a crumb – roaches will find it and consume it!
You can read more on our blog about how to get rid of them effectively so you can once again enjoy the comfort of your own home.
Is it harmful to humans to have pantry pests?
Pantry pests aren’t bugs that will bite you or attack you purposefully. They are, in most cases, harmless to humans as they merely feed off of food products by either eating and digesting them themselves or laying eggs on the shelves where you store supplies.
The larvae which grows on these products is also widely edible and comes with a variety of nutritional benefits. In fact, they can be considered delicacies in many countries!
Pantry pests pose no real threat to your health aside from some allergic reactions that are quite rare so it’s unfair to call them ‘pests.’
They simply go into people homes because human dwellings have been shown to have higher levels of food or scavenger type materials than the natural wildlife which they frequent regularly.
In conclusion, cockroaches, mealworms and ants are a few examples of true pest insects.
Conclusion
Eating a healthy and nutritious diet helps to improve your overall health, but the foods themselves should be stored in a safe location. If you’re concerned about the safety of your food, here are some facts about pantry insects. You have to know the things which can lead to prevent their crawling into your kitchen and foods which infest them. Further, you will learn about pantry pests in detail and also we have listed down types of materials that help you for making it pest free zone. These kinds of bugs are not lethal and it’s all about damaging or destroying food found in your home because many species are involved in this type of activity.
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