The saw toothed grain beetle is a pest that lives and feeds on grain products in food packaging and storage facilities. These insects also infest homes and kitchens.
Adults are 2.5 mm long and reddish brown in color with 6 teeth on each side of their thorax (hence the name “saw toothed”). Larvae hatch from eggs in 8-17 days to give flattened larvae about 0.9 mm long.
Inspection
The saw-toothed grain beetle is a slender, flat brown beetle that’s about 3 mm (approximately 1/8 inch) long. It has six tiny saw-like tooth projections on each side of its thorax, just behind its head.
It does not fly and is a common stored-product pest found in homes, food warehouses, and grain storage facilities. It eats a wide range of dry foods, but cereals and flour are its most common targets.
Inspect food products before purchasing them and ensure all grain and dry food goods are in airtight containers. Remove infested packages and dispose of them immediately.
Saw-toothed grain beetles can contaminate a variety of foodstuffs, including cereals, bread, pastas, dried fruit, nuts, sugar, chocolate and tobacco. They can also attack dried meats and pet foods. Females lay their eggs in cracks or on ground food, such as flour, and the larvae feed until they grow to adult size. Several generations can occur per year.
Cleaning
The sawtoothed grain beetle is a common pantry pest that causes serious damage to dry food stored in homes and other facilities. This pest feeds on bread, cereal, dried pasta, dry meats, candy, nuts and other dry goods.
Stored foods become infested when the pests pierce the grains, flour, sugar and other products to lay eggs. A single female can lay up to 250 eggs within cracks in the kernels of infested grain and other products.
In order to get rid of these pantry pests, it is important to clean out and remove infested items. This includes cleaning out shelves, floors, baseboards, and other areas that contain grain and other products susceptible to these insects.
This will help prevent an infestation from occurring in the first place. It will also help to keep any existing beetle populations from getting out of control. Once you have removed the beetles, vacuuming and sanitizing the area will help to make sure the infestation does not spread.
Insecticide Application
Sawtoothed grain beetles are a common pest in grains and other dry foods stored in cupboards. Their flat, narrow bodies make it easy for them to enter cracks or imperfections in packages.
The adults are brown and about 1/8’’ long. They have six tiny saw-like teeth on either side of their thorax.
Adults feed on a wide variety of dried food products, including flours and cereals. They will also attack other products such as pet food, bread, spices, chocolate and dry meats.
Insecticide applications help control Saw Toothed Grain Beetle infestations by killing the insects. Insecticides can be used to treat food containers and storage bins.
Insecticides that contain diatomite are a green alternative to traditional insecticides. Diatomite is a naturally occurring mineral and has a high insecticidal effect. It is highly effective against stored grain pests such as the saw-toothed grain beetle and corn weevil. The lethal time for the saw-toothed grain beetle was shortened with increasing diatomite dosages, suggesting that it is an efficient and safe alternative to chemically based insecticides.
Monitoring
Saw-toothed grain beetles are small, brown flattened insects about 3 millimetres long with six tooth-like projections on each side of the thorax. These are similar in appearance to the merchant grain beetle (Oryzaephilus mercator).
They can enter food packaging and chew through paper, cardboard boxes and cellophane. They can also use their small size to enter openings in damaged or poorly sealed packages.
The saw-toothed grain beetle is a secondary pest of stored oats, wheat and barley. It feeds on grain dust, broken grain and milled stock.
Monitoring grain bins for pests is important to determine whether control measures are needed. Grain probes, plastic tube traps and sticky pheromone traps can be used to detect and locate insect activity within the grain mass.