Saturday, September 6, 2008

Bugs in your Cupboards

Over the last few weeks we've had these little reddish/brown bugs in our kitchen and I've been so frustrated over them and grossed out by them. I bought bug spray, kitchen bug spray even, to kill the little monsters and they never seemed to go away. I was on the verge this morning of complaining to management when I decided I'd go through all the cabinets and pull everything out so that when management came to spray they could get into every nook and cranny.

Well, the house was cluttered with all our cabinet stuff: glasses, mugs, plates, bowls, spices, etc. I even scrubbed out the cabinets b/c I could see evidence of the stupid bugs in some places. I was really getting grossed out by the number I found and was beginning to feel hopeless.

Well, I started going through all my spices and everything to make sure no bugs were hiding on the outside and I got to the flour. I noticed there were bugs on the top of the bag and slowly started opening the bag. To my utter HORROR there were hundreds, if not Thousands of the bugs inside the bag! I freaked out and made Brian come take them to the dumpster immediately. Brian also had the good idea to check the bread machine flour and to my chagrin there were a few bugs in there too.

Well, I did my homework and came and looked up what the pests were. Here is what NDSU Ag Department has to say about them:

Confused Flour Beetle and Red Flour Beetle

black and white illustration of a flour beetle These beetles are frequent invaders in the home and are also one of the worst pests of flour mills. The beetles are about 1/8 inch long and reddish-brown in color. Females may live a year or more, dropping up to 500 eggs on infested foods. Small, white worms (larvae) hatch from these eggs and they feed until they're about 1/6 inch long. Under ideal conditions, development from egg to adult takes about two months. The beetles infest flour, breakfast food, baking powder, beans, peas, dry
pet food and other starchy materials.

So, hopefully the bugs won't come back now that we've disposed of the infected material. We've checked the breakfast food and all seems to be ok. What a NIGHTMARE!

3 comments:

Becky said...

ewww, glad you found the root to your problem! So if you get rid of the flour and whatnot, do they just go away???

Debbie said...

I sure hope so! It said if you get rid of the infected food they should be gone. But we'll see!

Anonymous said...

Pictures! We want pictures!