4 replies to this topic

[Rustybrew]

I have had a few weevils before in my grain. I don't worry about them too much usually. Weevils have now taken over my brewing closet. This time they are really bad. I'm finding them crawling all over everything. I'm still not too worried about my grains, but these guys keep extending their territory further and further out. If they make it to the kitchen pantry I am going to be in hot water with the wife.I keep my grain in the Home Depot paint buckets usually, but I have a couple of bags I just got that I am trying to make some room to fit into the buckets.Is there some sort of bug bomb or roach hotel I can put out to stop these guys? Is there some sort of spray I can put down that they wont cross? I know you can freeze the grain, but I don't have that much freezer space currently to do all the grain at the same time. Would it be any help to freeze one bucket at a time?Like I said, I'm not losing sleep over the bugs themselves, I just need to make sure they don't get into the kitchen

[djinkc]

Bagging the grain, sealing it well and a few small pieces of dry ice will do the trick - CO2. I had some I was concerned about a few years ago, turned out I didn't need to but it was cheap insurance. Those bags swelled like crazy.

Edited by dj in kc, 23 July 2010 - 06:29 PM.

[Rustybrew]

Unfortunately it has gotten way past trying to kill them in the bag. They have escaped out of the brewing closet, into the room and I have been spotting them on the walls outside of the room. I'll definitely try to kill the ones that are in the brewing closet with freezing and CO2, but I've got to figure out how to stop them moving into other parts of the house.I should have been paying closer attention to the brewing closet where I could nip it in the bud, I've got a nasty infestation now.

[Malzig]

You're probably screwed. Perhaps you could bomb the house, you might want to talk to an exterminator. Maybe a No-Pest Strip would work, but I don't think you're supposed to use them around food. They might be okay in the brewing closet if the grain is sealed up air tight.I got them about 15 years ago, probably in a bag of rice as far as I could figure. Now they are just a permanent part of my family. You can get traps that do a decent job of capturing a lot of them, and tends to draw them to one room. They never gets rid of all of them, though, so if you stop trapping them they start multiplying again.My advice, short of an exterminator, is to start killing every one you see, hunt down the ones that hide where the wall meets the ceiling, and seal up all your grain to isolate the problem and keep the new stuff clean. They may be in your pantry already, so watch out for the fine webbing when you open things up, then use the stuff quickly or get it out of the house. My belief is that it's a loosing battle, but good luck.

[SchwanzBrewer]

My parents got them at their house. We did get rib of them, but we had to remove all the food from the kitchen and pantry, inspect and throw out anything that looked like it might have something in it or wasn't sealed, spray all of the cabinets, pantry, and all over the place, wait a bout a week and then restock everything. We got them from bird seed.Cheers,Rich