How to Get Rid of Weevils in Your Pantry

Hello, my friend, hello again; today we come together to talk about How to Get Rid of Weevils in Your Pantry and hope the blog can help you.

Unlike pests that enter from outdoors, weevils sneak in with your groceries! Learn how to deal with a weevil infestation—and keep them from coming back.

No matter how scrupulously you clean your kitchen, you may still open your cabinets one day to find them crawling with tiny bugs. Unlike insects that enter through doors, windows, and crevices, weevils sneak in with your groceries. The adults chew into grains and lay eggs, making it virtually impossible to tell if you’ve purchased a sack of something that contains weevil larvae—that is, until you suddenly discover a slew of weevils in rice or weevils in flour.

What are weevils?

Before learning how to get rid of weevils, it helps to know what, exactly, they are. Weevils are small herbivorous beetles that belong to the Curculionidae family. Also called snout bugs after their elongated snouts, weevils are known for infesting common pantry items like rice, flour, and corn.

What do weevils look like? These pantry pests are quite small, usually between 1/16 and ¼ inch long, so they’re easy to miss. But they can live for up to 8 months as they munch on your pantry staples and lay eggs that look like small white grubs. There are actually thousands of different weevil species, but only a few species are interested in the contents of your pantry.

3 Types of Weevils You Might Find in Your Pantry

Of the some 40,000 weevil species, the ones that threaten your pantry are rice weevils, maize weevils, and granary weevils.

Rice weevils, aka Sitophilus oryzae, are usually about 1/16 to ⅛ inch long. They feed on rice and can lay around 400 eggs during their 5-month life cycle. Because they can fly, infestations can spread quickly. Rice weevils are reddish brown to black and have small round indentations on their thorax as well as red or yellow markings on their wings.
Maize Weevils

Similar to rice weevils, maize weevils (Sitophilus zeamais) are red-brown to black in color with red or yellow spots on their wings, and they range in size from 1/16 to ⅛ inch long. Their favorite foods are corn, pasta, bread, flour, and beans. Like rice weevils, maize weevils can fly, and they can lay 300 to 400 eggs during their 5- to 8-month lifespan.
Granary Weevils

Granary weevils are the largest of these three, usually around ¼ inch long, but unlike maize and rice weevils, granary weevils can’t fly, so they’re easier to contain. Also known as Sitophilus granarius, granary weevils love to feed on whole grains, like cereal and oats. They’re usually black-brown or red-brown in color and lay around 200 eggs in their 8-week life cycle.