How To Get Rid Of Rice Moths
How to get rid of rice moths? Rice moths are among the most common pantry pests in homes. Any household food and pet food product, including rice, grains flour, nuts, dried fruit, and cereals, can become infested with rice moths.
To ensure that rice moths are entirely removed from your kitchen and prevent them from ever returning, you must take care of all the essential steps involved in ridding your kitchen of these annoying pests!
We know how devastating an infestation like this can be. We researched extensively on some easy techniques that involve simple items one has at home, like bamboo or coffee grinders and a vacuum cleaner.
How To Get Rid Of Rice Moths
1. The first thing you’re going to see is rice moths are flying around your house. It’s a clear sign of a severe infestation.
You might even find the sticky mess these particulates leave behind on your food or in your home if the problem has gone unchecked for too long. If these pests have already laid eggs, it will only worsen from here.
2. The second sign that your company is about to host a party for silkworms is clear. The webs in your kitchen & living areas, especially inside your rice and flour containers, have been built or repaired recently.
The moth’s larvae are responsible for these webs and clusters, as they eat the food in the container, making their eggs along with it, then leaving large amounts of silk produced during the metamorphosis behind when they’re done.
3. The third sign of an infestation is when you start seeing mold growing on your dry food. These growths are made from larvae that are destroying your food as they eat it since this is an indirect way for the moths to take nutrients from their environment.
What Are Rice Moths?
Like the rice moths, flying bugs in your home often fly around erratically or make a zig-zag motion. These bugs are about 3/8 inches long and with a wingspan ranging from 1/2 inch to 5/8 inches.
But at rest, they tend to keep their wings on their bodies which can be mistaken for those of a butterfly.
However, the most distinguishing characteristic between them and the butterfly is that their wings lie flat over their backs as opposed to some part of it being folded outwards for quick access so that it could get airborne.
Used in commercial and residential kitchens alike, the Indian meal moth is an unwanted guest when spotted around a wheat germ and grain products such as cornmeal, flour, cereal, dried fruit, crackers, and bread, thus known as pantry pest.
How Do Rice Moths Get Into Your Kitchen?
There are several ways to come into contact with moths in your kitchen. They’re everywhere – from grocery stores to your kitchen cabinets.
Rice moths, in particular, are usually found in grain-based products and can even pop up unexpectedly when you take a bag of rice out of storage for dinner.
While you might think that your home is on the list for restaurant cleanliness, moths might be more than just a detestable inconvenience! In the unfortunate event that it turns out to be accurate, don’t despair.
Many preparations and do-it-yourself insecticide options are available. We’ve compiled a list of them below that will help walk you through this situation before it worsens.
How Do Rice Moths Work In Your Pantry?
Strangely, moths usually infest your kitchen to lay eggs. The larvae that hatch from their eggs are the real culprits for food contamination.
You can easily spot them because they look like tiny caterpillars with a greasy texture and cream in color. They’ve got a brownish head, and they crawl very slowly.
They camouflage them well with flour or rice, so it can be hard to spot them at times! So, if you see molds on your dry foods like rice, flour, and cereals.
Try to shake them up a bit as you’ll likely be surprised at what you find there – those rice moth larvae responsible for the food contamination in the first place.
Conclusion
Pantry pests are typical inside your cabinets, even if you don’t own an edible pantry. Rice moths may not hurt you, but they can contaminate the foods that you store. To get rid of the rice moths and keep them from damaging the contents in your pantry, you don’t need any insecticide or complicated pest treatments. All that is required is simply ridding your kitchen cabinets of any food products that the rice moths have contaminated by throwing them away and keeping only those stored in airtight containers.
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