Imagine reaching into your pantry for a snack and finding bugs crawling in it. Or, even worse, imagine eating food from your pantry without noticing the bugs first. If you have poorly stored food in your pantry that you might need for your next meal, you’ll realize how important it is to avoid pantry pests in your Peoria home.
Common Peoria Pantry Pests
While there are a variety of pantry-invading pests in our region, the four most common are the ones that you want to protect against. These include saw-toothed beetles, cigarette beetles, Indian meal moths, and small invasive ants. Getting to know these pests and what could be attracting them into your house will be a key to your prevention efforts.
Saw-toothed beetles: small and dark in color, these pests get their name from the teeth jutting out of their head and neck area. Their favorite foods are fruit, dried pasta, nuts, and seeds stored poorly in your pantry.
Cigarette beetles: small in size and light brown in color, these bugs love feeding on stored tobacco, which is where they got their name. However, they’ll also invade your pantry to eat, lay eggs, and leave their young to infest your stored food supplies.
Indian meal moths: one of the most common pantry invading pests, these flying home-invaders prefer to leave their young within the dried foods in your pantry. The adults do not eat your stored food, but they’ll fly into the pantry, lay eggs, and then leave their larvae to feast and grow up amongst stored items like pet food, cornmeal, rice, and oats.
Ants: if you notice a few ants in the kitchen or pantry, these are just scouts that will bring back long lines of hungry worker ants later. Any food in the pantry that isn’t properly stored will be at risk.
Preventing Pantry Pests Properly
If you want to protect your stored food items from pantry pests, start with the Big Four:
Check before you buy.
Store your food properly.
Check your screens and doors.
Seal off cracks and crevices.
Pantry pest prevention starts at the store. When you’re walking through the produce aisle, keep in mind that pantry pests often cause problems in stores as well. Make sure to inspect food thoroughly before putting it in the cart. Look for small dents or bulges in the product, as this could indicate an infestation. Once you bring food into your house, store it properly unless you’re going to eat it immediately. Even the cardboard boxes that most dried food comes in won’t keep many pantry pests at bay. Consider tightly sealed plastic containers instead.
Along with proper food storage, monitoring potential entry points is also a must. If pantry pests can’t get into your house at all, then they won’t get into your pantry. Start by applying proper weather-stripping underneath exterior doors, and make sure to check your screens for any rips or tears. Also check for any sort of cracks or crevices around the foundation of the home, particularly around windowsills. Silicone-based caulk is most effective for sealing these up.
Keep in mind that these methods are not guaranteed to keep pantry pests out for good, even though they can greatly increase your chances of avoiding an infestation. If you’re looking for prevention measures that provide guaranteed results, contact the pros. For assistance with an existing infestation or for more prevention advice, contact Quik-Kill Pest Eliminators today. We can help.