EVIL WEEVILS – INCONVENIENT BUGS THAT ATTACK GRAINS IN OUR PANTRY

Let’s pick up a brush and paint a picture: it’s Christmas Eve, and you’ve decided homemade cookies are just what the mask-wearing-Santa-doctor ordered. You go to your pantry, grab the flour, pop it open, and do a double-take – you could have sworn that flour was moving. No, you have not gone insane like Jack Nicholson in the Shining from all this COVID quarantine, you’ve likely just made first contact with Weevils.
Weevils are a type of beetle that are commonly found eating your food, though they can also be found on old clothing and furniture. Out of the nearly 100,000 varieties of weevils, only 3 of those species mess with our stuff. While Weevils do not bite, they reproduce in 6 weeks and live for 6 months; simple math tells how quickly this can get out of hand. The most frustrating part about Weevils is that plastic will not protect your food; if you’ve got Weevils, just toss your food and take preventative measures.
Now that we’ve identified the scourge that ruined our aforementioned hypothetical Christmas Eve cookies, how do they get into our houses? The bad news is you probably brought them home from the grocery store; the items were already infested; you just gave them a new home. Given that the egg, larvae, and pupal stages of Weevil development all occur in the grain, finding tainted food is nigh impossible. This news is gross to be sure, but not dangerous (let’s be fair, you’ve unwittingly eaten Weevil eggs before); your best bet is simply to toss your grains if you find Weevils.
Calling an exterminator won’t help you much, since we generally avoid pesticides near our food. Logic tells us that since Weevils love grains so much, we should start by keeping those thieves from our grains. We can accomplish this by storing our grains in sealed glass containers (rather than plastic, which Weevils can and will get through). Keeping in line with the previous point, clean up spills quickly; it’d be awfully silly to prevent Weevils from eating your grains in the pantry only to let them into your home because that spill wasn’t a priority to you. Finally, just throw it out if you’re concerned; you’re not going to find all the Weevils if they are there, and you’re only going to wonder if they are there if you don’t find them.
At the Chernov Team we understand that knowledge is power, while not all knowledge is world-changing, knowledge about the evil Weevils attacking your grain is powerful knowledge indeed. At the Chernov Team we know that whoever comes to the table most prepared leaves with the most, and the Chernov Team always leaves the table with the most.