pantry pests
Sawtooth grain beetles found in rice.
Over the years I have many customers who tell me they’ve started seeing very small insects inside their pantry. They sometimes think that they may be coming from another part of the kitchen or outside.
Many times I’ve identified them as sawtooth grain beetles. These are known as stored product pests. They infest food at some point between the packaging facility and the arrival to your pantry.
You’ll find them in grain products such as rice and cereal. If it goes untreated they’ll infest other food items in your pantry that are unsealed.
I once had a customer in Hoover who had a massive infestation of sawtooth grain beetles and could not figure out where they were coming from. After I had inspected her kitchen and pantry, I was baffled myself. Sawtooth grain beetles are often found at the source which is usually in the pantry.
Her pantry had been cleaned out and her infested food items were disposed of and other food items were sealed. It turns out that behind her pantry was a closet area that was adjacent to a storage room where she had kept corn for the purposes of feeding wild life near hear home.
The corn had been stored in that location for several months and forgotten about. It turns out that there were massive amounts of sawtooth grain beetles that had multiplied because the feeding conditions and habitat were right.
They were making their way into her pantry and that was causing a greater problem in the pantry of her kitchen.
If this problem presents itself, inspect all of the packaged food items in your pantry especially those that are already opened. Dispose of those that are infested and seal up others in air tight containers.
Here’s a short video about sawtooth grain beetles that I created a while back: sawtooth grain beetles video
My name is Greg with ETX Pest Management. Please call or text me @ 205-223-9460 or click here to find out about our four step initial service and how we help our customers to be pest free year around. I service select areas of Jefferson and Shelby County areas such as Hoover, Homewood, Vestavia, Pelham, Helena and Alabaster.
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