Pantry Moths

[jonp]

We got some. Into quite a bit of our dried goods like cornmeal, flour, etc. Pulling everything out and cleaning the pantry with vinegar and water. Most of our stuff is in plastic containers or mylar bags but anyone know of a way to prevent them in the first place?

[rancher1913]

certain areas of the country are more prone than others, luckily we are in a good area. best thing is to always place any thing like wheat, rice, flour, etc in the freezer for a week at sub zero temps, that will kill the babies and then you wont have the adults. you can use 1/2 gallon canning jars and a vacuum sealer to seal suspect food, easy to see the contents and less big bags of stuff that can bad.

[BNE]

Those things are evil.

They probably came to you house in a bird food bag or some other grain.

1) take every thing out and clean like you said you were doing.
2) look around the ceiling for nests/ webby looking things. Get rid of those.

After that, the best thing we found are the sticky traps that have a bait inside the trap. They fly in and stick to the walls.

I’ve had them get into the kitchen before and they ruined anything with chocolate or nuts.

Good luck!!

BNE

[jonp]

20lbs All Purpose Flour
20lbs Bread Flour
10lbs Corn Meal
10 lbs White Sugar
8 lbs Brown Sugar
20 lbs Rice

And so on all out the door.

[hoodat]

I think that a 350 degree bake in the oven would take the fight out of them. Don't suppose that the biscuit or muffin would taste much different. :redneck: jd

[FLINTNFIRE]

It tastes the same , just extra protein , people are squeamish , my old neighbor used to talk about the worms coming out of the crackers in the soup on ship in ww2 , and eating candy bars below deck as to not see them in the nuts .

[DougGuy]

20lbs All Purpose Flour
20lbs Bread Flour
10lbs Corn Meal
10 lbs White Sugar
8 lbs Brown Sugar
20 lbs Rice

And so on all out the door.

One of those was their admission ticket. They were already in at least one of those lots when you brought them home.

So, where did you buy this stuff and what brand are they?

Myself I like King Arthur flours because they are first rate quality, and the results ARE better than your typical "Great Value" equivalent. Might be a little more expensive but again, you gets what you pays for, and I have never had to toss anything with the KA brand on the bag.

[MaryB]

Put your bulk flours/rice/beans in a 5 gallon bucket with a gamma seal lid. Get a block of dry ice and drop a piece in each bucket and put the lid on loosely. After the ice has sublimated close the lid tightly. The CO2 will fill the container and kill anything in it. Alternately keep them in the freezer in vac sealed bags. Freezing below 0f for 7 days is supposed to kill off any eggs and I put any bags of grain I buy in the chest freezer at -20f for a week. Vacuum sealing will stop eggs from hatching too and may kill some of them. Foodsaver bags are NOT an oxygen barrier, O2 will slowly infiltrate over a year so not to be used for long term storage. Mylar bags are air tight, add an oxygen absorber inside for O2 free long term storage.

[farmbif]

instead of throwing out all that flour with some yeast and all that sugar sugar you could have made some custom, "hand sanitizer" for sipping purposes. that what one old timer I know uses, corn meal instead of cracked corn and wheat flour and a bit of rye flour if he can find any. and with the rice you don't even have to heat and condense to make sake.

[Handloader109]

SUGER? They might get in sugar, but they aren't gonna reproduce there. Grains yes. But unless there were a ton in them, they'd get eaten. Make dog treats if you don't to eat it. But a few weevils won't hurt you. Do you Really think that flour grits or any of the other staples are bug and trash free? USDA has a limit on the percentage allowed and it ain't zero.



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[jonp]

One of those was their admission ticket. They were already in at least one of those lots when you brought them home.

So, where did you buy this stuff and what brand are they?

Myself I like King Arthur flours because they are first rate quality, and the results ARE better than your typical "Great Value" equivalent. Might be a little more expensive but again, you gets what you pays for, and I have never had to toss anything with the KA brand on the bag.

Some were King Arthur having grown up in VT and know a couple of Professors at Norwich. IMHO King Arthur produces the finest Bread Flour in America. All were name brand but most local millers in NC like Abbott and Moss which is just down the road from me. I will say that the flour that survived were Pillsbury and Gold Medal. It seemed to me that the glue seal on them were much better than on the local brand.

[jonp]

SUGER? They might get in sugar, but they aren't gonna reproduce there. Grains yes. But unless there were a ton in them, they'd get eaten. Make dog treats if you don't to eat it. But a few weevils won't hurt you. Do you Really think that flour grits or any of the other staples are bug and trash free? USDA has a limit on the percentage allowed and it ain't zero.



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Nah, a few bugs don't bother me much. Filter them out and eat. Some nice Basmati rice I cooked for the wife the other day had a few "bargemen" when I rinsed it. Don't tell her that, though.

[OldBearHair]

My little French friend says " they have no bone". I have learned to use Peppermint, either oil or candy put the vittles in glass or thick plastic containers and stick the candy to the lid. The Health inspector came to the NM Boys Ranch kitchen and found a bug in the flour bin, a thirty five gallon "trash can". We fed it to our pigs. Learned that dried mint leaves would kill the eggs. (according to the Mormons) We sewed levies blue material into 6x6 inch bags and filled them with dried mint and put in the rice, flour and all things bugs like and never had more trouble with that. Flying moths just mean that you have a problem similar to gnats all over the kitchen, just remove the food source and they are gone. It seems that should you put the product in a container that withstands 28 inches of vaccuum, nothing survives if it has any moisture and bug eggs more than likely do. You might even listen closely and hear them pop. LOL Plastic bags of pastas and other stuff need to be inspected visually to detect any web like stuff inside and if so, you have bugs.

[MT Gianni]

I confess to never having heard of them. I suspect that like cockroaches they don't do well at higher elevations.

[jonp]

My little French friend says " they have no bone". I have learned to use Peppermint, either oil or candy put the vittles in glass or thick plastic containers and stick the candy to the lid. The Health inspector came to the NM Boys Ranch kitchen and found a bug in the flour bin, a thirty five gallon "trash can". We fed it to our pigs. Learned that dried mint leaves would kill the eggs. (according to the Mormons) We sewed levies blue material into 6x6 inch bags and filled them with dried mint and put in the rice, flour and all things bugs like and never had more trouble with that. Flying moths just mean that you have a problem similar to gnats all over the kitchen, just remove the food source and they are gone. It seems that should you put the product in a container that withstands 28 inches of vaccuum, nothing survives if it has any moisture and bug eggs more than likely do. You might even listen closely and hear them pop. LOL Plastic bags of pastas and other stuff need to be inspected visually to detect any web like stuff inside and if so, you have bugs.

Mint? we have much of that in the herb garden so will give that a try.

[Winger Ed.]

They probably came home inside a bag of flour or some kind of grain product,
hatched out and invaded everything else they could get into to eat & breed in.

Most of our stock of flour, cornmeal, etc. is stored in the freezer.
If there is any bugs in them, they won't hatch out and get into other things.

I wouldn't have tossed out all that stuff---
I've never seen critters in sugar, so I don't worry much about that.
We cook & make our own dog treat crackers with flour and our own dog food with rice & chicken.
In winter, I make our own bird seed blocks and they call for some cornmeal.
Also, my carp & catfish bait calls for flour and cornmeal.

[farmerjim]

Aluminium phosphide Tablets. They react with moisture (from the air) to form phosphine gas. Seal everything you want to treat into a 55 gal steel drum. Leave it for a week. It kills all stages of insects including eggs. It also kills people that mishandle it.
You can take a easy course to be certified to handle and buy it.

[gwpercle]

One of those was their admission ticket. They were already in at least one of those lots when you brought them home.

So, where did you buy this stuff and what brand are they?

Myself I like King Arthur flours because they are first rate quality, and the results ARE better than your typical "Great Value" equivalent. Might be a little more expensive but again, you gets what you pays for, and I have never had to toss anything with the KA brand on the bag.

This is what I've heard also ... most , if not all infestations get started when a product is brought into the house and it contains the tiny , almost invisible eggs ... they can stay dormat for 300 days , waiting for the right conditions to hatch out and start a new cycle .
Buying Bulk Products is sometimes tricky ... smaller sizes and brand names may cost more ... but throwing out 50 pounds of rice or flour isn't saving you any money .

My Mom always bought small quantities of rice , flour and corn meal and she would put some in the freezer for "safe keeping" ... flour she kept in the refrigerator ...so it wouldn't get "buggy" .
Gary

[john.k]

Years ago ,i worked maintenance in a food place.....the weevils ,bugs etc that normally eat grains.flour ,etc would reduce the 3" thick boards in the grain bins to lacework ,just like termites had eaten them......they didnt eat the wood,just chewed into it to get at the grain.

[Mr_Sheesh]

Instead of using dry ice I'd suggest using CO2 gas, you can rent the cylinders at some granges etc.; Dry ice causes condensation and that can cause mold, and rot, which I'd rather not eat, CO2 gas doesn't. You could let the dry ice sublime in a container and pour off the CO2 into your food to store, keeping the latter dry.

[GhostHawk]

I have learned to vacuum seal anything that could bring in with it grain weevils.

No air = baby's don't live long enough to grow, make more babys.

Freeze works if you have the room.

Beans, rice, sugar, salt all get vac sealed in plastic bag and put away in cool dry place for long term storage.

Once in a while I'll forget to seal a bag of flour and then we are doing what you did. Anything in a cardbord box is suspect.
They eat right through those. I saw a pair of pinholes in a 4lb crystal sugar sack. I don't think he liked what he found so he chewed out again.

Jiffy corn muffins, pizza mix we dumped a bunch of.

Pasta we mostly dumped into a plastic strainer with fairly large square holes.
Sifted the bugs right out of my wifes elbow macaroni and tri colored rotini.

Spaghetti I keep in a plastic container.

Bayer makes a home bug spray that drys and leaves a film. If a bug steps on it they die.
So our pantry got cleaned out, sprayed, left to dry before we put things away.

Countertop gets treated every spring to keep little ants and things down.

[waksupi]

Put bay leaves in with your dry goods.

[hiram]

Moth balls or moth flakes.

[1I-Jack]

Put bay leaves in with your dry goods.

+1

Used to have the bug problem but started putting a couple of bay leaves in with flour, corn meal, rice, etc and haven't had the problem since. Even when these things are stored in plastic coffee containers.

[jonp]

Bay we got.

[OldBearHair]

I confess to never having heard of them. I suspect that like cockroaches they don't do well at higher elevations.


As My wife and I took over the Kitchen duty at NM Boys Ranch, I went to the kitchen late at night and discovered roach bugs. Put down Boric acid powder by sprinkling around all moist area (drains etc.) Wet a cloth and lay it on the floor in an out of the way place and make a dike of Boric Acid solidly around it. I hear that the roaches get the powder on their feet and and then lick it off, killing them. Took care of the problem. Oh, A lot of cardboard boxes containing the groceries were brought in . We kept up with the Boric Acid thing with ner a problem 26 years. Oh MT, Albuquerque is at 5000 feet altitude and it seemed to have no effect on our roaches. I suppose it needs to be a higher altutude. No offence, Thankyou Bill