Flour mites and weevils are common kitchen pests that are often found in pantries and dry food cupboards. They thrive in dark and humid conditions, making your kitchen cupboard the perfect breeding ground. If you’ve discovered tiny bugs in your flour, it can be rather alarming; this article will provide guidance on how to deal with an infestation of flour weevils or mites, and prevent it from happening again!
What Do Flour Mites & Weevils Look Like? Flour mites and weevils are completely separate pests, although they display rather similar habits. Flour mites are very small insects in flour that are almost invisible to the naked eye. They have white bodies and brown coloured legs and usually live in flours, grains and cereals.
Weevils are larger than flour mites and so are easier to spot. They also have a darker body, being brown in colour. They are a form of beetle and so are slender and oval shaped, with scales or shiny hairs on their bodies. Adult weevils have a distinctive snout shaped nose and are between 3mm and 10mm in length.
How Do Mites/Weevils Get in Your Flour and Kitchen? Both flour mites and weevils will have come into your kitchen through your flour or wheat products. A few flour bugs can lay many eggs, and if your products are being stored for a long time, these eggs can hatch and cause an infestation. Other factors, such as heat, can increase the reproduction rate of kitchen mites and weevils, making the problem much worse.
How To Get Rid of Flour Weevils & Mites In some The best way to completely eradicate the problem is to throw out any packets in your cupboard or pantry that may have come into contact with the infestation as the flour insects could have crawled into any of the packaging and begun another infestation.
Thoroughly clean the cupboard with soapy water – you can use bleach, but be sure to take care – and make an effort to get right into the corners of the cupboard. Pesticide is the most effective way to get rid of the pests, although it can be very dangerous to use the chemical around food supplies and should only be handled by a professional.
Prevention of Flour Bugs To prevent the problem reoccurring, store your products in clean airtight containers. You can even try some simple home remedies such as freezing the produce for a few days to kill any flour bugs present and prevent the eggs from hatching, or adding a few bay leaves into your wheat products, which will act as a deterrent for the pests.
