Stored Product Pests

Stored product pests can be a problem in areas where food products, fabric and clothing items are stored.
Kitchen, pantries, restaurants, food processing plants, warehouses and many other locations are all subject to find invading stored product pests that attack food products.
Closets, carpets, dressers and other storage areas in homes and business are subject to invading beetles and moths that eat certain types of fabrics and leather.
Usually, the first sign that you may have a problem is the appearance of small beetles crawling over counter tops, moths flying across rooms, or caterpillars crawling up walls or across ceilings or observing small holes in clothes, carpets, or fabrics.

Fabric Areas
Carpet beetles feed on animal and plant substances such as wool, fur, feathers, hair, hides, horns, silk, velvet, felts and bone as well as seeds, grain, cereals, cake mixes, red pepper, rye meal and flour. Other substances include powdered milk, dog and cat food, leather, book bindings, dead insects, bird and rodent nests, and even cotton, linen, rayon, and jute, especially when stained with spilled food and animal excreta. The larvae cause the damage, crawling from room to room and living behind baseboards and molding, and in heating system air ducts, dresser drawers, carpets, clothing and furniture. Feeding damage often occurs under heavy furniture or pianos and at carpet edges.

 

Clothes moths are small (about 1/2-inch), buff-colored moths, the webbing clothes moth and the case making clothes moth. The webbing clothes moth is uniformly buff-colored, whereas the case making clothes moth is similar in appearance but has indistinct dark specks on the wings.  Clothes moths are seldom seen because they avoid light. They prefer dark, undisturbed areas such as closets, basements and attics, and tend to live in corners or in folds of fabric. If you do see tiny moths flying about in the kitchen and other open areas, they are probably grain moths originating from some infested cereal, flour or stored food item. Clothes moth adults do not feed so they cause no injury to fabrics. However, the adults produce eggs which hatch into the fabric-eating larvae.  It is the larvae that do all the damage.  The larval stage of clothes moths is a creamy-white caterpillar up to 1/2-inch long. Webbing clothes moth larvae spin silken feeding tunnels or patches of webbing as they move about on the surface of fabrics. The case making clothes moth encloses itself in a portable case that it drags about wherever it goes.

Food Areas
Several types of beetles and moths can infest whole grains or processed foods. The solution requires finding the source usually in a stored food product.  The easiest cure is to destroy or discard all infested products in which these pests have developed, do a through cleanup, and use of sealed storage containers to prevent recurring problems.   Some stored product pests feed inside whole kernels. These include the granary weevil, rice weevil, and the Angoumois grain moth.
Red and confused flour beetles, cigarette beetles, drugstore beetles, and the saw- toothed grain beetles are 1/8 inch long red brown insects. The immature or larval stages usually occur only in infested products and usually are not seen.

 

Drugstore beetles and cigarette beetles attack almost any household food and spice and leather articles. Cigarette beetles are most commonly found in dried dog food and paprika. Drugstore beetles are often in bread, flour, meal, breakfast foods, and spices like red pepper. Adults of both species can fly and are attracted to light.
Flour beetles and the saw toothed grain beetle cannot attack whole or undamaged grains but will feed on a wide variety of processed grains (flour, meal), as well as dried fruits, dry dog food, dried meats, candy bars, drugs, tobacco, and a variety of other products. The life cycle of the flour beetles takes about 7 weeks. Adult females can live for several months to more than a year. Confused flour beetles fly and are attracted to lights; red flour beetles crawl toward light but apparently do not fly. Saw toothed grain beetles neither fly nor are they attracted to light.

 

 

 

Rice weevils are 1/8- to 1/4-inch long, reddish brown to black snout beetles. Adults can live for 6 to 8 months and may be found some distance from infested articles.

 

 

The Angoumois grain moth is 1/2 inch long and pale yellow brown.  It may be seen fluttering in the house. The adult resembles a clothes moth but can be recognized by the finger-like projection of the hind wing tip.

 

 

The Indian meal moth is a very common household pest. The distinctive 1/2-inch long adult is easily recognized by the pale gray and coppery brown front wings. The dirty white to pink larval stage is a caterpillar that crawls away from the infested products to find a place in which to transform to the adult. The caterpillars feed on the surface and produce silk webbing throughout the food source. The life cycle can be as short as 25 days. They can feed in dried fruits, powdered milk, chocolate, flour, meal, dried dog food, bird seed and a variety of food stuffs. They prefer coarse flours and corn meal.

 

Control
While adults are the signs of an infestation, merely killing them is not the solution. Infested articles must be found and destroyed. Identification of the pest can provide clues on where to look but some of these insects can live on a wide range of materials.
In general the older infestations have a greater the number of insects.  Often the initial source is partially used boxes or bags of products that have been forgotten in the backs of pantries and shelves. The infestation spreads as the active adults search for new food sources. A thorough search is needed to locate all infested items. If they are not found in pantries or cupboards, then begin to look at such things as decorative items or bird seed.

Bizzy Bees can help you with stored product problems.

Contact us today and see how good a service can “BEE”

 

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