Flour bugs like to find their way into flour, cereal, baking mixes, and grain based foods and they can quickly ruin your baking experience. Even foods like bird seed might become infested. Sometimes an infestation will show itself as little brown bits in your food. Unopened food packages aren’t immune: these bugs can chew right through even tough packaging like cardboard or foil. But they might not just be flour bugs, they could be beetles, worms, or meal moths.
Meal moths are some of the worst and they will deposit their larvae straight into your food. Lovely, right?. Meal moths prefer flowers, grains, and cereal, but will gladly go for fruit or seeds in your pantry as well. Many spices aren’t immune either.
Various beetles may also be culprits. Domestic beetles will similarly plant their larvae in food. Sawtooth grain beetles like oatmeal and bird seed, and they do well in Florida because there’s no winter. They’d normally stop breeding during a cold winter, but here in Florida, they can churn out seven generations of annoying offspring in a year. Drugstore and cigarette beetles may have funny names but will infest bread, cereals, and dried fruit and that’s not funny. Spider beetles look like oversized tick/spider hybrids but love anything that’s gotten moldy.
Aside from moths, flour beetles are some of the most likely culprits when you find little bugs in your flour.
To avoid bugs in flour bags and containers, make sure the food you purchase hasn’t been torn open or had its seal broken. Store them somewhere dry, and use airtight plastic or glass containers when you can. Clean up crumbs as well.
To get rid of pantry pests, deny them their sources of food. By following the above steps to deter them, you’ll avoid making your home being a suitable environment for pantry pests.