A pest problem is something that no homeowner wants to deal with, and pantry pests are no exception. While any pest affects the sanitation and safety of your home, pantry pests take this one step further by contaminating your food supply. These pests come in direct contact with your food, and if they manage to nibble away at the packaging for long enough to find their way in, the entire supply has to be thrown away.

Here is some valuable information about pantry pests, as well as the best ways to remove them from your home:

Types Of Pantry Pests

Indian Meal Moths

Indian meal moths are one of the most commonly seen pantry pests. These moths can be found in your home, but they are also a big problem in grocery stores and food packaging plants. Finding their way into food packaging in these locations is the most common way that meal moths sneak into your home, and once they’ve found their way in they can start causing all sorts of trouble.

Meal moth larva commonly invade flour, various types of whole grains, dried produce and cereal. Even once the moth has left the packaging, remnants of their silk webbing will remain alongside the food. For this reason you should always throw out products that you suspect have been compromised by an Indian meal moth.

If you’re unsure if a pest you’ve found in your home is a meal moth, here’s what to look for: These pests are about half an inch long with a very distinctive pattern on their wings. A third of the wings will be a light grey color, and the rest will be splattered with a copper hue.

Cigarette, Grain and Dermestid Beetles

Beetles are, for the most part, a harmless pest. Once they’ve contaminated your food supply, however, the product is no longer safe to eat. There are many types of beetles that could find their way into your pantry, including cigarette beetles, grain beetles and the dermestid beetle.

Different varieties of beetles are fond of many different foods. Pet food, cereals, candy, pasta, nuts and dried fruits are all among the favorite foods of these pantry pests. In appearance, these different types of beetles also vary greatly. For the most part you will not find pantry beetles that are larger than half an inch. If these pests find their way into your pantry, you should get in touch with a pest control provider. Pest control experts will be able to provide you with a pheromone trap that will catch the beetles and put an end to the infestation.

Weevils

Weevils are another common pantry pest, and they are notoriously hard to spot due to their tiny size. They feed on beans and other legumes, seeds, and whole grains. These tiny bugs are very common in the fields in which these foods are harvested, and due to their size they can slip past both farmers and food packaging plants. Like with any pest that finds its way into your food, you don’t want to eat a product that has become contaminated by weevils.

Weevils can reproduce as many as five times within the span of a year, so an uncontrolled population of these pests can grow rapidly. If you suspect that a weevil population is present in your pantry, give a home pest control provider a call. Attempting to squash all of these bugs on your own can be quite the challenge due to their keen ability to hide, but pest control providers will know just what to do to show theses and other pantry pests the door.