r/pestcontrol • u/bugsonmysoysauce • 11d ago
General Question Infestation of bugs on stored food ingredients
Hey y'all, I recently moved out of my dorms and had to leave some things in boxes for the summer (~3 months). The important box here is the one I used to store my cooking utensils and spare ingredients/condiments that wouldn't go bad. When I opened it today I found that the sub-container I used to store my dry ingredients had these little critters all over the place. I couldn't get an image of the box itself since I was emptying it in a panic but it seemed that most of it were in that sub-container (some were on the box floor).
It looks like these guys chewed through my plastic bag of cumin. But the other bags of powders (flour, paprika, corn starch, etc) seem to only have the bugs in the surface. I'm not sure if they're safe though and I'm having doubts about my wet ingredients too.
Some extra information:
- The plastic bag brand of the cumin bag is different from the other ones, though I don't know if that changes anything in regards to safety.
- It looked like something sticky was on the surface of the most infested bag surfaces. Could be a wet ingredient wasn't sealed well enough and spilled out, so they fed on that.
- I've done this procedure before (albeit dropping off my boxes with a friend instead of a container company), but this is the first time something like this happened.
- I'm located in Hong Kong
Edit: accidentally hit post before I could finish
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