Part of today’s section of tips and hints is in response to Polly’s question
about crawling or flying insects in corn meal or other grains. I am talking
about the Mediterranean flour moth (also known as the Egyptian or Mill Moth) -
are you familiar with these little pests? If you do any bulk food purchasing,
you may have these little critters in your place. The claim is that they only
infest cereal products, such as flour and meal, but will infest grain and other
foodstuffs and once you are infested, they will lay their eggs on and in
anything including the folds of plastic bags. The moth eggs will hatch and
infest your pantry if you don’t take a few precautions:
- Upon bringing
grains home, such as oats, flour, seeds (including bird food), bran, etc.,
put in the freezer over night. (I put all dry good products I buy at bulk
food stores in the freezer overnight)
- If you end up
infested (as I once experienced), you will see little white worms that will
grow into the off white or gray colored adult moths. The first step to
defeating this infestation is to clean out your pantry and dispose of the
infested items- remember, once hatched, these little moths will eat lots of
different things that are being stored in plastic bags, like dried fruit,
rice, potato flakes, etc. - you will know that you have these moths because
they leave spider web like residue and egg sacks inside the containers of
food and there will be holes chewed through the bags. Once cleaned out, the
only effective way to stay on top of any future infestation is to:
-freeze all
grain items once brought home
-place traps
in the pantry, slightly away from all food items. There is only one
type of trap available and it is called the Pantry Pest
Trap. They are available in hardware stores and garden nurseries.
-place a
couple of bay leaves in tightly covered containers with your grain
products as a defense against the moths
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