Moths
 

I've been getting, repeatedly, moths. And thier larvae in our pantry. My understanding from internet research is that these are "indian meal moths", and the eggs are likely in the food when we buy it, and we probably eat the eggs all the time without knowing it if they don't hatch.

Each time we cleaned out well and try to keep all our food in hard plastic containers. We freeze some packages before putting them in the cabinet. Our next step is going to be putting bay leaves in the containers and on the shelves.

I was raised that it's wrong to waste food, so beyond just the cost, it kills me to have to throw anything out. I want to make sure I do everything I can to prevent it from happening again.

So this is my long winded way of asking for advice.

Thanks all!

Re: Moths
 

Vacuum sealing your grain and beans stops their life cycle in its tracks. It is really hard to stamp out an infestation in progress. They go after crackers, etc too. There are some pheremone traps for the moths, but I would vacuum seal my grain and beans, AND put the traps in the pantry. Put crackers, etc in the freezer maybe.

Re: Moths
 

Nasty little buggers once they have a start, even found some recently in my coca. Hard to believe what they can bore into. Found some in some of my Jiffy pizza mix packages!

Re: Moths
 

He is correct!

We put all grains, like rice or cornmeal, and our parrot's food, into the freezer for 2 days to stop and kill the larve.......its a lot cheaper than vacuum sealing everything you use. We vacuum seal for long-term storage, and that will stop them too - but we actually freeze things for two days before vacuum sealing them.

The larve often come into the house from the supermarket, and other stores, bags and, sometimes, as stated above, in the foods you bring home and not yet hatched or full grown.

We also use pheremone traps for the moths if we need to.

Finally, we put most things in the pantry into plastic zip-lock bags, even if we do not totally seal them (if the item is too big to seal) and that keeps 90% of the crawling insects from getting into the foods. This is especially good for sugar and flour type items.

And you really do not want to know what insects and other things are in foods that you eat because the government allows a small percentage - but I can tell you if you really want to know! :D

Re: Moths
 

Have them. usually they get an outbreak if we leave anything starchy out in the open. like cornflakes, cornmeal, flour. have been keeping these in sealed containers and they mostly gone away

Re: Moths
 

They will get into thru the edges of boxes - putting these things into ziplock bags hinders their ability to get in - and I think they do not like the taste of plastic. The ziplocks aren't a perfect solution - but as I said above - it keeps 90% of the buggers out.

I started doing that years ago in Boston where the cockroach problem is huge - some of the worst in the nation, cause the Back Bay area is totally built on landfill from like 1776! *l* (OK, maybe not that far back, but garbage from long, long ago!)