The flour beetle is a small insect with which almost every housewife is familiar. It is found in cereals and starch. Often you can see it in flour. Products in which the insect has settled become unsuitable for further use.
Flour bug feels great in barns. However, this is not the only habitat. The flour beetle (photo you will see below), or, as scientists call it, the small flour beetle, can be found anywhere.
A small pest, only three to four millimeters in size, develops from the larva within three weeks. The insect is able to penetrate into any click on the box or in the bag. In these holes, the larvae infecting flour, grain, cereals, starch, as well as bran, are deposited by the Khrushchak. Adult individuals, as well as small larvae, are able to form entire colonies in products stored in the open state.
Even if a small number of bugs is found, it is impossible to use the product for cooking various dishes. The fact is that with the help of sieving, small larvae will not be removed, since they have very small sizes. Visual detection is also not possible. By color, the larvae merge with those products in which they settled. That is why the Khrushchak is often called a deceiver.
The pest insects spoil, as a rule, semolina and bran, rice, rye or wheat flour. How to prevent contamination of products? First of all, the storage of cereals, starch, bran and flour should be carried out in containers with tight lids. They can serve as glass or plastic boxes or cans. Garlic will help prevent pest infestations. Its cloves are placed in stored foods. Some housewives use lavender oil. Flour bug does not tolerate its smell. Even cotton swabs soaked in lavender oil , placed on kitchen shelves, perfectly repel pests. In the case when the products are stored in cloth bags, they become unattainable for the hrushchak when they are pretreated in soda or saline.
If a flour beetle has settled in the kitchen, how to get rid of it? First of all, a thorough inspection of all products is required. If they are damaged by a pest, further use is not recommended. If a flour bug is found, but it is a pity to get rid of products, you can apply some methods of saving bulk products. They are recommended for twenty-four hours to be placed in the freezer. Pests do not tolerate low temperatures. You can calcine cereals or flour in the oven, in which the temperature regime is set equal to one hundred and twenty degrees. These methods will destroy the larvae and the bug. However, products that have undergone these temperature extremes will not have the same quality and properties.
Kitchen cabinets in which a pest is found must be immediately disinfected. In this case, the use of chemicals, for example, dichlorvos, is permissible. The surface of the cabinets can also be washed with a solution of soda or vinegar. Poison baits will also get rid of food pests. They are made from a mixture of powdered sugar (or flour) and borax. Components are taken in equal quantities.