Help! I've been invaded!

When we lived in Jamaica we had weevils in flour and just sieved them out.

NanKate I guess it's extra protein.....

I keep flour etc in airtight containers, mostly from habit (we had mice in the farmhouse that were seemingly impervious to cats, traps and poison) so haven't come across this (yet!) keeps fingers crossed

So far no problems

magnifying glass in hand now before I go into the cupboard.

I became fed up with our spices. They were usually out of date and worse still, my curries tasted like those from the 1950s

We bought a pestle and mortar and fresh seeds from an Asian shop. What a difference

I keep( the little jars of herbs and spices from Swartz), to store the seeds and a jam jar for cardamom. I like 2-3 cardamom in fresh tomato soup.

I enjoy pounding the seeds into a fragrant powder. May buy a curry leaf plant for the bottom of the garden.

adamh do you make your own spicy dishes?

I always soak pudding rice before cooking. Recently I saw masses of little dead bodies lying in the water. Yuk. When I looked in the rice jar it was moving.

Evidently weevils don't turn into mealworms, if they're beetles. If mealworms are larvae they must change into whopping big beetles.
I like beetles and silverfish are interesting as they're the same as they were millions of years ago. Maybe not millions but lots.
I have a little book called Why Not Eat Insects? No thanks but they wouldn't do you any harm.

According to my friend Google weevils are beetles (and I'd always thought they were larva/grubs of some sort..too much Patrick O'Brian, methinks)

We had a biscuit beetle infestation a few years ago, which sounds very similar. We threw away everything that was infested, emptied the cupboards for a few days and hoovered up every single beetle we found. That seemed to do the trick. And I invested in some airtight containers.

Is that what weevils turn into? I never knew that apricot

I keep all flours, sugars, salt in the fridge to keep them dry.
If you let weevils complete their life cycle would you get meal-worms? Birds love these and they're expensive so perhaps we could grow our own.

If you eat meat, why not just eat them? They will be dead if you cook them. Insects are the upcoming food of the future, we hear. Can An Expert tell us if they exude any nasty substances?

I don't eat meat but I wouldn't throw away good food that had a few bugs in. Yes if it's heaving...

I have to keep all my food in plastic boxes because mice, but haven't thought before about being attacked from within. Will check.

We can't go on throwing out 1/3 of all the food that's produced. This is in the same category as wonky carrots.
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This brought back horrific memories.......

A few years ago, I opened a packet of semolina and saw it 'move'. As did the all the flours and sugars, and all manner of dry goods..........

I even unscrewed the lid of a jar of sugar (with a guest standing my my side. I did the best Oscar performance of normality that one can imagine) to find a larvae happily crawling around the lid. It stopped in amazement at being found and looked expectantly up at me. It had, however, to go........

It turned out that we had been infested with 'product stored moths', probably brought in to the house in the semolina as it was the most heavily infested (it was heaving!) but they had quickly spread everywhere, as other Gransnetters have said.

A day or so later, I went into my utility room (having asked friends of mine if they were having a particularly bad year for moths, as I had noticed a few around) and there was, at the far end, a 'cloud' of moths.

As I stood, trying to comprehend what I was seeing, this 'cloud' moved silently towards me. They were coming to get me! Have you ever thought of malevolent moths? Well, I have seen them!

Fly spray? Poof. They brushed it off and kept on a-coming. In desperation I flew upstairs and grabbed my hairspray and used a whole can. That did the trick and they were no more.

I will never forget all the food we had to throw away and the hours of scrubbing and extra (unwanted!) cleaning, too.

Horrible, horrible, horrible. (The moths and the extra cleaning!)

Ive had them too, one really hot summer and my flour was not out of date, I now keep everything in plastic sealed containers.

btw, the ones in books and in bathrooms are silverfish, I get them in my undersink cupboard, little blighters, I hate them and will happily throw out anything that has them inside, even a favourite book. I am wary of books from the charity shops in case there are any in them. My last pseudonym was 'silverfish'.

Funnily enough I just started to make bread again after a long gap ( my husband has been ill and has only just come home). I found several bags of extra strong bread flour which were way out of date. Usually I use out of date goods quite happily but this time I threw them away just in case the nasty little weevils appeared! I really didn't want my husband to be ill again!

A work colleague of mine found weevils in a bag of flour and threw out everything - even tinned food! Rather excessive I thought.

I once found little black mites in flour but used it believing that the hot oven temperature in the baking would kill them anyway. No-one suffered any ill effects. Does that make me a bad person? In my defence I did throw the rest of the flour away and bought a new pack.

I used to work in a hospital kitchen and cockroaches were rife in the lowest cupboards. No one seemed unduly bothered and they were never mentioned!! I listened to a fascinating programme on Radio 4 last week, called Natural Histories (I think) which was about cockroaches. It made me more sympathetic towards them. They are not as indestructible as people think.

I had a weevil in a bag of flour once. There might have been more than one, but I didn't stop to check! Since then I examine any packet stuff like flour dreading seeing a other.

I can't stand silverfish. They give me the willies and unfortunately we get them quite often in the bathroom and even in our bedroom. Apparently they eat almost anything and are quite hard to get rid of once you have them. When we have them, I have tissues strategically placed ready to squash the horrible creatures. Ugh!

Yuk, I hate, really hate cockroaches. Luckily I've only come across them in a couple of self catering places on holiday - then they were some one else's problem not mine!

We do have silver fish in our pantry, (and the downstairs loo) but I quite like them, I've been told they eat mites and spiders and such like so I figure they're OK to have around. I was trained from an early age to always keep 'loose' foodstuffs in sealed containers. Or the fridge.

I remember one scuttling through the screen door when it was opened at DD's house; she let the dog in but it was too fast for the dog.
They are just revolting.

Oh, cockroaches, yes they could move fast. The only time I saw them was once on opening the cupbord under the kitchen sink - these creatures dashed out towards me . I thought - hoped - they were looking for shadow, rather than running to attack.

Greyduster I lived in Hong Kong and Singapore as a child. I remember the cockroaches, they were HUGE. I also remember that our cooker and fridge had legs and they were stood in bowls of water that were topped up each morning to stop insects and vermin getting into them.

They were known as 'the great leveller' because everyone had to put up with them, from the British High Commissioner to the lowest of us mortals!

Cockroaches!
They are very fast

Centipede type things?

I don't remember Bombay runners - were they spiders?

I didn't mind any creepy crawlies except the enormous 'Bombay runners'
Ugh, yes!! They abound in the tropics don't they.