Tis The Season For Pantry Pests

Well, the holiday season is approaching fast, and soon we will be gathering in kitchens to prepare fantastic feasts and delicious desserts for ourselves and our loved ones. There is so much more cooking and baking to do than usual as you pull out the treasured recipes again, and it is especially fun creating food traditions with children. You will want to plan ahead, not only for the menus and recipes but for the ingredients too. You may already have everything you need in your pantry, but some of those ingredients might have been there awhile and might contain some nasty pantry pests. Nothing could be worse than reaching for some important ingredients only to find it has been contaminated with pests, causing you to delay your baking for another day.

You should always check your pantry before you plan to use any food that has been stored there. These foods include all dry cereal, pasta, flour, spices, crackers, seeds, nuts, and fruit. Foods stored in paper are particularly at risk for contamination from pantry pests. Some of these pests are grain moths, Indian meal moth, rice weevils, drugstore beetles, tobacco beetles, and flour beetles. Sometimes these pests come into homes already inside the packaged foods, but they can also come in from outside sources. Even if your house is spotlessly clean, pantry pests can still become a problem. Usually, the early larval stage of the pest will spend much of its time in the stored food. During the pupal stage, they will stay close by to the source in cracks, corners, and packaging. The adults will venture further away from the food source, and in favorable conditions, breed and create several generations each year. Once you have discovered an adult pantry pest it’s almost certainly too late, your food will have already been contaminated and will need to be thrown away.

In order to avoid pantry pests this holiday season you will need to:

• Inspect food on a regular basis
• Keep food in containers with tight lids
• Clean your kitchen and pantry shelves regularly
• Buy foods that have packaging that does not have rips or holes
• Keep old and new food separate
• Throw away old and contaminated food
• Thoroughly clean empty containers before putting new food in them
• Keep kitchen and pantry food areas dry

Now is the perfect time to consider year-round pest control to eliminate the possibility of spoiling the holidays. DIY pest control can certainly make a difference in many cases, but with the holiday rush and the challenge of eliminating every last pest that could lay eggs and begin the process all over again, consider an alternative that will free you up to focus on the joys of the season rather than the pests in your seasoning. Russell Pest Control in Knoxville and Eastern Tennessee offers effective pest control solutions for household pests including pantry pests. We are a full-service pest management company and know how to apply proven solutions in a personalized treatment plan. Just give us a call today for more information about our year-round pest control program, and how we can solve your pest problems and prevent them from ever being an issue again.