How to get rid of bugs in cereals and prevent them from appearing again

Bugs in cereals and flour can appear in every home; this is not a sign of untidiness or neglect in the kitchen. Housewives usually do not store flour and cereals in huge quantities for months at a time, as was the case in the past. But even small packages of cereals can harbor parasites. They come into the house from shops, from warehouses - with purchased cereals, dried fruits, flour, nuts. In this regard, it is especially dangerous to buy cereals, spices and dried fruits at “oriental” bazaars.

Pests do not pose a threat to life, but they can cause damage to the budget. The valuable nutritional quality of contaminated supplies is reduced to zero, as the bugs eat the nutritious core of grains and nuts. The waste products of parasites remaining in supplies can cause allergies, even to a severe degree. And simply eating food that has been contaminated by insects is unpleasant and unhygienic. Therefore, when you find uninvited guests, you need to get rid of them immediately.

What insects live in cereals?

In houses and apartments, several types of insects most often live, feeding on cereals, flour products, dried fruits, nuts or spices:

1. bread grinder;
2. red (Surinamese) mucoed;
3. flour beetle;
4. food moth;
5. weevil.

Bread grinders most often live in bakeries and bakeries; they are rarely found in houses, unless they were brought with some purchased products. They are brown bugs up to 3 mm in length. They can fly, often flying towards the light towards the windows.In addition to dry bread and crumbs, any grains, tea, dried plants, dry paper (books), and animal feed can be eaten.

The red (or Surinamese) flour eater is a fan of eating flour, grain or cereals. This pest lives and reproduces only in high humidity; it does not spoil well-dried grain and flour. Externally, these are reddish-brown bugs about 2mm long. The beetle larva is small - no more than 0.8 mm; it is difficult to see it in the rump. The mucoed is very prolific. But in an ordinary apartment with good ventilation and normal air humidity, mucous eaters do not live long. They enter the house with poorly dried, low-quality raw materials.

The mealworm is a small red-brown insect 3-4 mm long. Likes to live in different types of flour, semolina and millet cereals, oatmeal. Less commonly colonizes stocks of rice, buckwheat and dried fruits. These beetles multiply quickly both in cereals and in kitchen furniture and dishes.

The Indian food moth is a small, inconspicuous butterfly, similar to an ordinary moth, up to 10 mm long. It is extremely prolific - in a couple of weeks it manages to lay about 500 eggs, from which caterpillar larvae emerge. They are the ones who devour cereal reserves. After a few weeks, the larvae turn into pupae, which turn into adults, ready to lay eggs again. The moth is the most difficult to detect and destroy, and it is also very tenacious.

Weevils are small dark brown insects with an elongated proboscis. Under good conditions they produce offspring 5-6 times a year. They most often parasitize buckwheat, rice, flour, pasta and legumes.

How to get rid of bugs in cereals

It is not easy to destroy insects that have settled in cereals, but it is doable. To do this you need to take several steps:

1. Destroy visible beetles in the rump. It is best to throw away without regret those supplies in which insects were found. Eating them is unpleasant and unsafe. Even if you remove the beetles from the product, there will still be larvae, waste products - excrement, pieces of shell and dead insects. And the cereal itself is already pretty spoiled.
2. If there is still a need to save stocks in which bugs are found, you can resort to heat treatment - fry the cereal in the oven for 20 minutes at a temperature of 55 - 70 degrees (insects die at 50 degrees and above). The second option is to keep it in the freezer for a couple of hours or on the balcony in winter (at temperatures below -15). Living individuals and larvae will die. After this, the flour can be sifted, and large grains can be filled with water so that the insects float up. But waste products will not go anywhere!
3. Once the contaminated supplies are destroyed, all that remains is to clean out the lockers. Wash all shelves, door hinges, and bushing holes with a disinfectant. Afterwards, wipe everything with a vinegar solution.
4. Thoroughly rinse the jars in which grain supplies were stored, after boiling or freezing. Then rinse them with vinegar solution and dry.
5. To destroy those insects that may have scattered during harvesting, you can use poison. Mix equal parts of ground cereal or flour, powdered sugar and boric acid. Place the mixture in the corners of the cabinets, in the most secluded places in the kitchen furniture.

After these activities, you can refill the jars with cereals and replenish stocks of flour, dried fruits, and nuts. But then you should carefully monitor so that the bugs do not appear again.

Prevention of insects in cereals

Bugs in flour and cereals appear in the house mainly from newly purchased products. Even factory-produced, hermetically packaged grains may initially contain insects or their larvae. This occurs due to violations in the production and storage of grains and inadequate quality control. Knowing this fact, you need to prevent kitchen contamination, starting with the purchase of food.

• When choosing cereal in a store, especially by weight, inspect the contents of the package if it is transparent. If there are suspicious inclusions there, put them back on the shelf. The same goes for nuts and dried fruits. For example, when buying shelled walnuts, you need to break a couple and look under the membrane. Insects may crawl out from there or traces of the beetles’ “meal” will be visible.
• If the bag of cereal is opaque, carefully inspect the cereal or flour at home, sift and sort. It is important to ensure that the product is pure.
• It is better not to buy dried fruits by weight in the markets. There is a 99 percent chance that there will be pests there.
• For prevention, even if there are no visible insects, you can fry or freeze the grains. Then the larvae, if any, will die.
• To store supplies, use glass or plastic jars with airtight lids with rubber seals. Then the bugs preserved in the furniture will not get there.
• Before pouring the cereal into the jar, line the bottom with a piece of food foil or put a coin, a nail or something metal. It is not known for sure whether bugs are really afraid of metal, but it wouldn’t hurt.
• The smell of garlic and hot pepper will probably repel pests. An unpeeled whole clove of garlic or a chili pepper can be placed in a jar of cereal and placed in the corners of the cabinets.
• Dried fruits and nuts should be heat-treated and then stored in the refrigerator, not on the shelves.
• It is believed that salt wrapped in gauze, lemon zest, whole cloves and bay leaves repel bugs and prevent them from multiplying in flour.
• Periodically, you need to do a general cleaning of the cabinets and check the cereals to see if insects have started up there.

Once you get rid of bugs in flour and cereals, it is not a fact that you will no longer see them in the kitchen. Often, low-quality products that are already infected with pests appear on the shelves. But observing preventive measures and hygiene on kitchen shelves reduces the risk of their reappearance to a minimum. I like