Setting up a natural weevil repellent saves you time, stress, and wasted food. It’s awful to open your cabinets to see dozens of little black beetles swarming around your family’s rice or flour supply. Throwing out food is expensive and uncomfortable. Nobody enjoys wasting hard-earned money or precious food.
The granary weevil is one of the rifest grain pests that regularly infest grain bins on farms and American pantries. Weevils eat and destroy food, so it’s crucial to put a homemade weevil deterrent in place to prevent loss. Adult weevils prefer rice and flour when given a choice, though they are not discriminating eaters.
Weevils can be disastrous. They eat grains such as corn, oats, rye, and cereals and feast on nuts, seeds, and grain-based foods like bread and pasta if they cannot acquire grain. These nuisance insects take over your dried goods and quickly destroy many pounds of food if left to spread. Read on to find the best ways to kill weevils with natural solutions like sprays made from organic ingredients.
Simple Recipes for Homemade Weevil Repellent Spray
Whether you call them rice bugs or flour bugs, learning about natural weevil repellent ideas can be beneficial. Although some weevils find their way inside through floor and wall fractures, most enter a property within another grain item.
A grocery store sack of flour, fresh cat food, or a package of dried beans could be contaminated. Weevils reproduce quickly, and even one affected bag in a store soon becomes a significant issue.
One accidentally infected grain bag quickly spreads infestation across your whole pantry and food supply. Set up an uncomplicated homemade weevil deterrent to safeguard your dried goods from these devastating pests.
What Are Weevils?
If you notice tiny black bugs in your stored grain, you’re likely dealing with granary weevils. In a bad infestation, you might see minuscule insects crawling on the outside of a sack of flour or rice. In most cases, you won’t realize the food is infested until you take it home and open the packaging.
Though some weevils target a plant, most are pantry bugs. Weevils typically enter through infested food or when pantry moths, such as the cabbage moth, fly inside. The adult weevil lays its weevil eggs inside the kernels of your grain product, making a weevil infestation tricky to spot until it’s too late.
Natural Weevil Repellent Using a Bay Leaf
The ladybug and the weevil are natural enemies, yet unleashing a swarm of ladybugs in your house is not an option. A better idea for natural pest control is using bay leaves. Commonly used for cooking and seasoning food, bay leaves are available at most grocery stores and packaged as whole dried leaves or ground into fine shreds.
Choose whole leaves rather than pieces to make changing out your leaves easier. Bay leaves have a strong, bitter aroma that repels weevils and the pantry moth. The leaves help to avoid a rice weevil infestation in your food. Add a few bay leaves to your canisters as a natural weevil deterrent for storing flour, rice, and other grain products.
Scent-Based Homemade Weevil Deterrent Strategies
Weevils have a keen sense of smell – use this to your advantage and keep them out. To keep weevils out of rice, take fresh cloves of garlic, peel them, cut them in half, and scatter them around. Weevils are naturally kept away from your grain by the strong smell of garlic.
Alternatively, use a packet of matches to prevent weevils. Weevils won’t get into your food if you keep your matchboxes in the pantry. Though the sulfur in matchboxes is barely noticeable to us, weevils avoid them because of the sulfur’s repulsive smell.
The scent approach works well, but because the aromas are so intense, your grains may taste or smell like garlic or sulfur. To prevent aroma transfer, ensure dry food is stored in sealed, airtight containers.
DIY Weevil Repellent With White Vinegar
Try distilled white vinegar if you’d prefer a cheap cleaner to rid your cupboards and pantry of weevils and their eggs. Acetic acid, a weak acid found in distilled white vinegar, instantly kills weevils if it touches them.
In addition to destroying weevils, white vinegar repels weevils instantly by irritating their acute sense of smell, making it a doubly effective deterrent. To make a weevil spray, combine vinegar and water.
Shake the vinegar and water in the bottle to combine and spray the inner surfaces of your cupboard, including the walls. Wipe the shelves with a clean, dry towel, and let them air dry.
Soapy Water Weevil Deterrent Spray
When you find weevils in your pantry, immediately try to identify their source. Inspect each grain product and remove any containing insects. Seal these infected grains in an airtight bag like a freezer bag, and dispose of them in the outside trash can.
Once you remove the grain, vacuum out your pantry and mix a straightforward spray cleaner with liquid dish soap.
Use soapy water to wet a sponge. To prevent the spread of weevils, clean your shelves with a moist sponge and remove any adult, larval, or egg stages. Open the doors to your pantry or cabinets to let the space dry and give everything a close look. Repeat the cleaning if you are unsure that the weevils have been eliminated.
Pest control might seem daunting whether you have flea beetles, Japanese beetles, a carpet beetle invasion, or vine weevil grubs. Craft a homemade weevil repellent spray to oust the granary weevil. Keep this pesky insect from destroying your food with simple DIY techniques using safe and non-toxic everyday items.
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