You might find this disgusting but you have probably ingested a bug, more than once in your lifetime. While most people aren’t even aware of this fact, there is a great chance that they have actually (accidentally of course) either ingested the larva, eggs, or a nasty little bug at some point when eating a rice-based diet regularly at home. The reason behind this? Rice is a staple across the length and breadth of India and when people are not consuming rice they are consuming another kind of grain in one form or the other. Bugs in grains are very common and, in many cases, unavoidable since modalities like transport, storage, and delivery need to be factored.
Weevils, pantry beetles, flour bugs, and ghuns (in Hindi) infestation can become a huge nuisance for everyone. They sneakily enter your pantry and destroy all your food storage, and thus need to be treated.
Here is a list of DIY hacks below to help you keep bugs out of your grain storage at home and in the warehouses should you be in the business of storing, distributing, and retailing grains as well.
Freeze them out
It is advised to keep packets of spices and flour in the freezer for four days as soon as you have bought them. You can do this with flour, oats, cookies, cornmeal, and spices. This will kill all the larvae and eggs if present inside the packet and will stop further infestation. Take it out and store it in the normal place.
Bay or neem leaves
The Bay leaf is one of the best remedies to get rid of beetles. Bay or neem leaves can be put inside loose flour in containers that are more prone to contamination.
Cloves
This is a great idea if you are living alone and have faced this problem for the first time. Cloves are widely available and will fight off the bugs and will also avoid their infestation. You can also sprinkle some cloves around your cupboard shelves and pantry area.
Matchbox
Sounds weird but it is a great way to repel weevils as matchboxes contain sulfur and sulfur is not liked by weevils. Keep the matchbox open near the grains and weevils will not be seen thereabouts. You may also keep small bags of black pepper in your pantry.
Natural Sunlight
If a large quantity of flour has been attacked by beetles, just keep it in the sunlight. This will shoo them away as these bugs do not like the sunlight and will look for a dark and moist place. Keep the contaminated flour in the sunlight for a day and you get rid of weevils easily.
Other home remedies
You can either put ginger, garlic, or whole turmeric inside the rice container to keep rice bugs away.
While these home remedies will help you tackle the problem at large one surefire way to get rid of unwanted grain insects and pests is to turn to your pest control experts, Ultima Search. One of their products is a grain remedy called Granol which helps eliminate grain pests from storage areas inside homes and warehouses as well.
