How to get rid of pantry pests (moths, weevils, beetles)?

Before shelving new groceries, check packaging for small holes, tears, webbing, or tiny insects. Look at the seams and folds of cardboard boxes and along the sealed edges of bags. Reject or return items with signs of infestation.

Place whole dried bay leaves inside flour containers, rice bins, and grain storage. Replace every 2-3 months as the scent fades. Some people also tape bay leaves to pantry shelves.

Never spray insecticides, foggers, or bug bombs inside your pantry or food storage areas. This includes aerosol sprays, residual sprays, and insecticide strips. Pantry pest control is entirely mechanical: remove infested food, clean thoroughly, and use airtight storage.

Capture a specimen and identify whether you're dealing with Indian meal moths (small tan/copper moths, webbing in food), flour beetles (tiny reddish-brown beetles in flour and grain), weevils (beetles with a snout, found inside whole grains), or drugstore beetles (round brown beetles in spices and…

Keep whole wheat flour, nut flours, cornmeal, specialty grains, and other seldom-used dry goods in the freezer permanently rather than in the pantry. Use freezer-safe containers or heavy-duty zip bags with air squeezed out.

When you bring home flour, rice, cornmeal, whole grains, dried fruit, or birdseed, place the sealed package in the freezer for 7 days before transferring to pantry storage. This kills any eggs or larvae that may have entered the food during processing or at the store.

Place Indian meal moth pheromone traps (e.g., Terro Pantry Moth Traps, Dr. Killigan's) inside your pantry. These sticky traps use a sex pheromone to attract adult male moths. Check and replace traps every 2-3 months.

Transfer all dry goods — flour, rice, oats, cereal, pasta, sugar, spices, and pet food — into airtight, hard-sided containers made of glass, thick plastic, or metal. Cardboard boxes and thin bags offer zero protection.

Pantry pest eggs and pupae hide in crevices far from the food source. Cleaning eliminates these hidden life stages that would otherwise re-infest new food within weeks.

Pantry pests breed inside food packaging. Removing the food source eliminates the active infestation. Even unopened packages can harbor larvae if they entered through micro-holes.