The Ultimate Natural Guide to Banishing Flour Bugs & Pantry Pests for Good
Natural ways to purge and prevent pests in your pantry like flour bugs and weevils. These are the methods I use that really work!
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Discovering pantry pests like weevils or flour bugs is incredibly frustrating. We store items because we want to use them, not have pesky bugs steal them! I myself did a pantry clean out several months ago when I discovered a forgotten bag of cashews that became a breeding ground for the little buggers. From there they ventured into several other pantry items like my flour, rice, and grains. The following tips are what I used to effectively eradicate the pests without any chemicals needed.
Step 1: How to identify the problem
This one is pretty easy because it involves a visual inspection. Check your grains, seeds, nuts, flours, spices for tiny little brownish/redish bugs or the tan colored larvae and pupa. For best results, act at the first sign.
Be sure to check the bottom corners and folds of bags as well as the surface of your foods. Also check under containers in your pantry for where the bugs might be hiding. To learn more about these and other common pests you can check out this link.
Step 2: Get the infested products out of your pantry
When I saw how bad the infestation was in certain items in my pantry, the first thing I did was dispose of those items by taking them out to the dumpster. Getting the largest part of the problem OUT really is the first step. If it was just a few bugs, I honestly would have just scooped them out and disposed of them before moving on to the next steps, but if you uncover a large number of adults, that means you have EVEN MORE eggs. So it's sometimes best to just cut your losses.
Step 3: Clean
I also cleaned every surface in the pantry to make sure I wiped out any larvae or eggs with a vinegar based cleaner. Harsh chemicals aren't needed, but don't skip the cleaning step. A clean space is less hospitable to the bugs and gives you a blank slate to start your prevention steps in the future. In this step you also might consider looking for any cracks in your pantry where outside bugs can get in. Sealing those is an option to eliminate the concern. Often times though, the pests are entering your home in the food itself.
Step 3: Prevent future adult bugs
Flour bug eggs, as an example, can take 5 to 12 days to hatch. So you may well bring home a bag of flour, for example, that has no adult bugs, but will hatch eggs within a couple weeks. Luckily, you can kill any eggs by placing the new item in the freezer for 48 hours. This does not harm flour or rice etc., but it is very effective to ensure you aren't bringing pests into your pantry. For items with mild infestations, I have also removed adult bugs and then placed the item in the freezer to kill anything I missed. This led to great results. Tip: You can even store items like flour in the freezer permanently to REALLY prevent these bug-o's if you have the freezer space and desire.
Step 4: Use airtight containers
Once you have frozen the new pantry items to kill what is IN them, using airtight containers keeps bugs OUT of them. I personally try to avoid plastic for my food so I use either glass Caraway containers (my flour has been 100% bug free since using this one) or a less expensive glass option (the size variations are great for beans, pasta, rice etc.) The important thing is to make sure they are actually airtight or the container isn't all that helpful. While these are an investment, an added benefit besides pest control is that these containers make organization easy and pretty - like these classic mason jars.
Step 5: Make the pantry a less appealing environment
There are several scented food items that these bugs simply don't like and that mask the scent of the foods they do like. Bonus....they smell great for a pantry! Garlic, clove, bay leaves are all examples of these scents. I personally use bay leaves inside my airtight containers as an added sense of security so the bugs won't sniff out the goods. Outside of the containers I use cloves and clove essential oil so that my entire pantry is not attractive to bugs. I place little dishes with the cloves and essential oil for an added scent boost in the back corners of my pantry shelves and replace as the scent fades.
Those are the five easy steps! Whether you want to focus on prevention before you find pests or need to banish the bugs that have decided to call your pantry items home, these steps have proven very effective and safe for my pantry needs. Checking items regularly and keeping up with these procedures will help you maintain a clean, safe, bug free pantry. Cheers!
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