Food-Infesting Pests

Anna: "A lot of times with food infesting pests, it starts with people noticing moths or some kind of a larvae in their pantry or maybe a spice cabinet."

Jim: "Food infesting pests can attack at any point in time. What usually happens is you'll bring something into the home that is contaminated. For me I was making chili. I went to dump my spices in my chili and the beetles came out with the spices. You'll see beetles fly into lights. The most common beetle we have are either the Sawtoothed Grain Beetle or the Cigarette Beetle. Both are small tan color, maybe an 1/8 of an inch long. The Indian Meal Moth, often you'll see that flying around. You're just looking for cocoons in the pantry where you store your food. A lot of times the easy way to find out if you have a problem is everything in your pantry. Everything from cake mixes to instant pudding. All of that needs to go in Ziploc bags or plastic containers that seal tight."

Anna "What you're doing is you're containing that item in that bag, so that if there is something in there, in the next day or two it's going to start making itself known. You're going to start to see it. If you're going to clean your pantry out now that it's empty you need to go ahead and do it before we come out to treat. You do not want to wipe up anything that we've put down, because basically it's like we've not been there."

Jim: "If we do not find the source, it is hard if not impossible to eliminate these bugs. You've got to be very, very thorough. If you're very thorough at cleaning it out. If you're good at putting everything in the plastic bags, this problem can be solved very easily."