Stores: Did Confused Flour Beetles Infect Your Shelf Grains?
If your employees or customers detect foul odors around your flour and other shelf foods, call pest control today. Confused flour beetles may live inside your products or on your shelves. Learn more about confused flour beetles and how they infect the grains on your shelves below.
What Are Confused Flour Beetles?
Confused flour beetles consume a wide variety of foods made with grains, such as cereal, oatmeal, and flour. The pests may also live in and around fresh fruit, pharmaceutical drugs, spices, and other items you may store in your pantry or on your shelves and counters. Once the pests find a food source, they'll infest or destroy it.
Confused flour beetles have tiny, flat oval-shaped bodies that appear reddish-brown to the naked eye. Some people often confuse these beetles with the red flour beetle. However, the red flour beetle tends to fly rather than crawl or scurry around food. The confused flour beetle also emits a foul or pungent odor in food when you disturb it. The confused flour beetles generally infest damaged food, such as old grain or broken corn kernels. Items spilling out of their packaging or that were damaged during transit may also attract pests. Some pests can live under shelves or under shelf-lining paper for long periods of time. The location provides the insects with easy access to grains and other items.
If you think the pests in your grains are confused flour beetles, contact a commercial pest control company today.
How Do You Remove Beetles From Your Store?
You don't want to tackle a confused flour beetle infestation on your own. You can't use pest sprays or other chemicals around your food and other perishable items to get rid of the pests. Some chemicals can penetrate and contaminate food, medications, and other perishable items. A pest control company can eliminate the beetles in your store without causing harm to any of your undamaged goods.
The first thing a commercial pest control company may do is remove the odorous products from your shelves and store. Pest control may also remove opened, torn, or otherwise damaged products from your store. The pests can enter anything that's damaged or opened. After pest control removes the damaged items from your shelves, they'll check the shelving units for beetle eggs and larvae. If pest control finds eggs and larvae on your shelves, they remove them with special disinfectants. Pest control will also sanitize the rest of your store's shelving units, counters, and other surfaces during the visit. A company will also use other measures to remove and keep confused flour beetles out of your store, including placing insect growth regulators beneath your shelves. The regulators prevent young beetles from maturing.
You can find more information about confused flour beetles and how to remove them from your store by contacting pest control services today.