I have noticed that after a while of food being in the pantry little black bugs seem to pop up. Even in sealed bags that have not been opened. HOW DO I PREVENT THEM? Or my question is CAN I? The other day I went to pour a bowl of cereal and there they were. I know they come up in flower aswell. Anyway I hope someone here knows what I am talking about.
fyi, if you have any animal food stored in carport or garage, they can come inside from that to your food.
sounds like weevils. In the old days my mother threw out everything and started over to get rid of weevils. Once you have them they somehow get into all flour and cereals. I found a website with other ideas:
http://dearreader.typepad.com/dear/2004/11/how_to_get_rid...
If you have pets they often times enter the house from their food. It is recomened not to store pet food near your own food.
Definitely weevils. Throw all the dry goods out and start over. Google weevils and I'm sure you can find some good info. They're annoying aren't they?
I hate to make assumptions, but since we've never had what you're talking about and we've bought food from different stores and all.... I'm thinking it's a problem in your house. Maybe like the other poster said, you need to throw everything away and start over. I know it sounds awful and expensive, but if you want to fix the problem... I figure if you have them in different foods and we've never had them, it must be a house problem. Our sugar and flour isn't even sealed. It's in canisters (that don't seal tightly) on the counter. We never have exterminators come and have had ants, silverfish, earwigs, etc, so it's not like we are entirely bug-free.
Oh, and as to how they get into sealed bags and such, a lot of bugs can eat through plastic. Just throw some crickets in a plastic bag, you'll see. Had them in my car once and they escaped everywhere. You should have seen the hole they chewed!
It's quite likely they're in there even when you get them from the store. Since I buy specialty flours, they're in well sealed packages when they come from the store and store them long term either in a ziploc or tupperward in the fridge or pantry. Tupperware isn't cheap, but their pantry containers are very helpful for condensing all these dry products and keeping them fresher.
I've had them before. I took everything out of the pantry and gave it a good scrubbing. Then I tossed everything that was open and checked all other packaging very throughly and put it back in. It took care of the problem. So - yes you probably have to throw out a lot, but not everything.
