Bugs in the pantry

[easyrider]

We haven't ever had this happen but yesterday there were some bugs in a Costco bag of rice from India. Moth like bugs is what we first noticed. A few of these months have been roaming around the pantry. When I looked the bug up it looks like a rice wevel so I think most of them were in the rice which is now in a plastic garbage bag.

My thought is to just throw out all of the bagged foods and let off a bug bomb.

Bill

 

[geist1223]

Take it back to Costco.

 

[easyrider]

Take it back to Costco.

That's the plan. The other plan is to stop buying bulk rice from Costco. I like the Jasmine rice from Safeway in the smaller plastic bags.

Bill

 

[clifffaith]

When we had dogs it was a regular occurrence to bring moths/worms home in large bags of kibble. When we downsized the bags we’d buy we found that smaller bags for some reason didn’t have the same problem.

 

[easyrider]

When we had dogs it was a regular occurrence to bring moths/worms home in large bags of kibble. When we downsized the bags we’d buy we found that smaller bags for some reason didn’t have the same problem.

I didn't occur to me that it could be the dog food. I opened the new bag of rice in the same week I opened the new bag of dog food.

Bill

 

[DeniseM]

I never buy in bulk - I see too many kids entertaining themselves by playing in the open barrels of beans & rice like they were in the sandbox.

 

[stmartinfan]

We got an infestation of some sort of bug from some dog treats we had stored in a hall closet…but before we discovered them they had also migrated into my kitchen food cupboard and found homes in some open boxes of pancake mix and other items. Despite tossing lots of food and putting items in plastic bins it took forever to get rid them.

Dog food is known for being a source of this kind of infestation. I used to work for a food company and our 800 line people always tried to alert callers who complained about bugs in their open bags of flour to also check dry pet food, because it was so common as the source. We refunded for their purchase but knew the callers needed to check for other sources. That’s why pet food is shelved in a section of the supermarket with cleaning supplies, etc., not human food.

 

[isisdave]

Are you sure they're not pantry moths? These buggers (heh!) are terribly hard to eradicate -- they can even puncture "sealed" bags of things like cookies -- we had to throw out everything not in a can or jar (and check the jar seal -- they can lay eggs between the glass and the top!), then bomb, shoot insecticide at the corners and baseboards, get sticky traps, and it took like three iterations to finally get them gone.

 

[stmartinfan]

Not sure of the exact name, but pantry moths sounds like what I had too. Really hard to get rid of them. I remodeled my kitchen during that time, and replacing the shelving in my pantry area finally seemed to help! (Didn't do it to kill the moths, but a nice side affect!) But I still used the sticky traps for a while because they seemed to linger.

 

[easyrider]

The bag of rice went back to Costco. Before it went back I did sieve through it outside and there were other small bugs along with the moths. I decided to look at the open bag of dog food and didn't find any moths or anything yesterday but today there is a line of ants trying to get into the dog food. Spayed everything non-edible with some bug spray. The dog food is only a 15 pound bag about 2/3's full and I'm going to put it in one gallon zip locks. Roxy doesn't mind eating ants if any are left. I put out some Advion gel to attract the ants should they come back.

Bill