Tiny but very harmful - flour mite

What is a flour mite?

There are pests of plants, grains, and other food products, which are quite problematic to get rid of. Among them we can distinguish the flour mite or, as it is also called, the granary mite. It would seem, what harm can an insect whose size is less than a centimeter cause? In fact, with the appearance of this arachnid, food begins to deteriorate and rot.

It is quite difficult to notice the flour mite due to its small size and color. The body is white, the legs are brown. He has quite strong and powerful paws, thanks to which he calmly moves on a flat vertical surface (for example, glass).

Females live relatively short lives. In summer 2-3 months, in winter up to 6 months. During this period they are able to lay up to 200 eggs. The flour mite feeds on wheat grains, flax seeds, legumes and others. The most delicious food for him is the one that is rich in fatty compounds.

Flour mite or granary mite: what kind of insect is it and how to destroy it

There can be many insects and parasites living in the house, which are not particularly pleasant to humans. These include cockroaches, bedbugs, and even ticks, which, by the way, will be discussed in this article. While it is easy to get rid of the first and second parasites, protecting your own home from flour mites is not as easy as it seems at first glance. This pest loves to live in food, it is impossible to see it, as it is very small. How then can you find out if there is a parasite in cereals and other foods?

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Flour mite - who is it?
2. Favorite habitats
3. How can you tell if there are insects in your food?
4. What it looks like under a microscope
5. Prevention against flour mites

Flour mite - who is it?

Its size is slightly less than 1 mm, it is a very small and barely noticeable creature that causes colossal damage to all food stored in the kitchen. The flour mite, or, as it is commonly called, the barn spider, spoils everything in its path. After this parasite, you can no longer eat food, as you may get sick. Only the color of the spider mite helps to notice it in food. Its body has a dull white tint, and its paws are brown. Moreover, this insect can even walk on a vertical surface. Despite the fact that the insect does not live that long, especially the females, they can lay several hundred eggs at a time - and this is very dangerous.

Favorite habitats

The insect is unpretentious and loves to live in almost any food product. But very often it can be seen in the kitchen, where there are cereals, legumes and food that is full of fat. Also, the flour mite often lives in the mill, and for many it is not surprising that the insect so actively creates a “paradise” for itself there. In addition, the parasite prefers to live in flour mills, bakeries, stores full of fresh baked goods and warehouses that are not processed at all. Even mouse holes are to the liking of the flour mite, and a haystack is simply an incredible delicacy for the insect. The most favorable temperature for the life of this unpleasant creature is 22-24 degrees Celsius. This is the most suitable and optimal condition to start reproducing.

How can you tell if there are insects in your food?

Most often, flour mites begin to live in flour. Even if the human eye is not able to see the parasite, you can check whether there is a mite in the product in another way:

1. Examine the flour, especially look at its color. Since the flour mite has brown legs, a crust will appear on the cereal, the same color as ordinary sand.
2. Ticks have a rather specific smell, somewhat reminiscent of mint. Therefore, if the flour smells like mint, which is not typical for it, then there is definitely a flour mite inside it. The same goes for other products, by the way.
3. You can simply check the flour for unevenness. So, for example, pour the cereal onto the table, level it and see what happens next. If after 20 minutes the flour lies unevenly on its own, it means there is definitely a flour mite here.
4. It is worth trying to use double-sided tape, which can be glued to any cabinet where there is flour, legumes and any other food product. After a couple of days, take a magnifying glass and try to see what remains on the tape. It is not surprising that there will be small bodies of flour mites there.

What it looks like under a microscope

Harm to the health of others

In addition to spoiling cereals and cereals, which cannot be purchased, let alone consumed, the flour mite is harmful to human health.

• if a tick gets on the respiratory organ or in the esophagus, a person may experience a severe allergy, including asphyxia and anaphylaxis;
• animals lose their appetite and may have severe diarrhea; cats and dogs can lose a lot of weight and become passive;
• a person may have not only allergies, but also terrible itching;
• Red pimples may appear on the skin, which will be accompanied by severe scabies, the same can happen with pets.

Prevention against flour mites

To ensure that everything is calm in your kitchen and that no insects live in it, especially flour mites, it is worth treating the area.

1. Be sure to clean out all your kitchen cabinets. Constantly remove crumbs and dust - after all, this is all a favorable habitat for flour mites.
2. All cereals should be in jars, which should be closed with a tight lid.
3. The temperature in the kitchen should be cool, and if you place all the cans of cereals closer to the stove, then flour mites will definitely get into them.
4. Let there be a bay leaf on each shelf, the aroma of which the flour mite does not like so much.
5. You should find the main source of pest spread and be sure to remove it, not throwing it in the trash, but getting rid of it immediately. Dispose of all products next to which the main grain lay, where there was a lot of flour mites.
6. Take a rag, wet it and soap it. Walk through all the jars with it, removing a layer of dust, this is a kind of disinfestation against flour mites. Wipe all vertical surfaces of the cabinet, rinsing the cloth each time.
7. Every crack on the shelf needs to be treated, as flour mites can easily get in there. Take a vacuum cleaner, putting on the desired attachment, pull out the ticks from each hole in the cupboard with cereals. The eye can't see it, but you'll get the larvae out of there.
8. Try to keep the kitchen clean. This is very important, since ticks are very fond of dust, cereals, dried fruits, meat and even fish. If there is only one crumb, then do not be lazy to remove it and throw it away. Let this not become a bait for the flour mite. Even scattered salt on the floor may well be an excellent reason for a tick to take up residence in the kitchen.

The barn mite is a very harmful insect, even looking at its image you can shiver. Those short brown legs and small round body are not the cutest thing there can be. It is worth remembering that this parasite loves to live in the kitchen and spoil food, and people, without even noticing it, consume them. Therefore, in order not to get sick, since flour mites often spread diseases, to feel good and not to endanger your children and pets, it is best to get rid of the arachnid creature in time. Do preventive maintenance of your apartment more often, and then everything will be fine.

Where does the pest live?

The habitat of the flour mite may vary. It is often found in residential premises, mills, flour mills, bakeries, shops, and warehouses. In addition, it feels great in the soil, haystacks, burrows of moles and mice.

The most favorable temperature for flour mites is 22-24°. Under these conditions, the female actively mates with the male. After a few days, she can already lay eggs (3-4 eggs per day). Offspring, as a rule, reproduce close to those places where there is food.

The temperature regime at which the female cannot lay eggs is more than 30° and less than 8°.

Clean barns are the key to grain preservation

In order to prevent flour mites from infesting, it is necessary to properly store food and grain crops, especially in warehouses. There are several tips on how to avoid this pest in barns:

1. Maintain the correct temperature and moisture. From time to time the room must be ventilated. Provide climate control. This can be done using air conditioners and fans. If the products allow, it is better to keep them at low temperatures, in which case granary mites are unlikely to appear.
2. Keep warehouses perfectly clean. If debris, dust, or other waste appears, it must be removed.
3. Make sure there are no mice in the room. They are carriers of such ticks.
4. Quality control. Weekly check of stored products for the presence of small scales of the pest.

In addition, you need to keep the vehicle and containers in which grain and other products of interest to the flour mite are transported clean.

How can you tell if there is a mite in your flour?

Pests of plants, cereals, and legumes can occur not only in barns and warehouses where there is a large amount of produce. This can also happen at home. Most often, mites are found in flour. They are so small that it is impossible to notice the danger at first glance. But no matter how camouflaged these arachnids are, there are ways to understand that they are in food:

1. Look carefully at the color of the flour; the paws of pests have a characteristic brown color, so a sand-like crust forms on the surface.
2. Barn mites have a characteristic odor similar to mint. The taste of the product may also change, giving off a sickly sweet taste.
3. Ticks never stand still, they are constantly moving. Therefore, you can pour flour onto the surface, smooth it out and pay attention after 10-15 minutes. If pests are present, unevenness will appear.
4. Another simple way is to use double-sided tape. Glue it in the cabinet where flour, drying, legumes and other products are stored. After a few days, take a magnifying glass and carefully examine the surface of the tape.

Flour mites do not bite, but many people experience allergic reactions in the form of itching and redness of the skin when coming into contact with these pests.

These tips will help you quickly detect the pest and prevent it from reproducing.

Bread mite – a pest of grain crops

Bread mite

— Siteroptes (-Pediculopsis) graminum Reuter belongs to the class of arachnids, family of bellied mites Pyemotidae.

Adult ticks have 8 legs, of which two pairs are located in front and two in back. The body of the female is elongated-ovoid, 0.2-0.3 mm long; proboscis with strong jaws. Cephalothorax with three pairs of setae, of which the third pair reaches the length of the entire abdomen. The abdomen is divided by transverse folds into several apparent segments, each of which has a pair of setae. The pregnant female is 2 mm long, her body is highly swollen, resembling the appearance of a sac filled with embryos.

The male is 0.1 mm in size, the body is broadly ovoid. The hind legs are thicker than the others, slightly curved inward and end in curved claws. The cephalothorax is round-trapezoidal with four pairs of setae. The proboscis is small and deformed. The hindgut and anus are absent. Males do not eat and do not live long. The larvae are six-legged and similar in appearance to adults.

Bread mite: 1 - male; 2 - young female; 3 - female with developed embryos; 4 - damaged wheat; 5 - part of a damaged stem; 6 - the same in section

Bread flare is noted in the non-chernozem zone, in Ukraine, the Volga region, and Siberia. Widely found in several countries in central Europe and the USA. It reproduces on rye, wheat, oats, barley, corn, and many cereal grasses.

Young and sexually mature females overwinter in the shoots of various grasses, in the stubble of grain crops and in the soil near the roots. Males die off before the onset of winter. In spring, females feed on decaying parts of the stem and greatly increase in size. Under favorable conditions, the female produces from 100 to 500 eggs. The embryos inside the females develop into six-legged larvae, which emerge through a break in the mother's skin. In addition to the larvae, adult males and nymphs of females also emerge. In summer, mites are found mainly in the upper leaf sheath of grasses and cereals in all phases of development. In a damaged stem you can find 100-300 mites.

The development of the offspring of an adult female lasts 3-4 weeks, and during the summer there may be 3-5 generations. Reproduction of ticks depends on temperature and humidity. In hot, dry summers, damaged stems dry out and the development of bread mite embryos is suspended. In rainy weather, the tissues of the damaged stem rot and soften, giving female mites the opportunity to feed intensively. The embryos develop quickly. Intense reproduction of the tick occurs on moist, more moist lands.

On growing cereals, mites are located behind the sheath of the top leaf, and feeding and development occur under its cover. Mites suck the juices of the tender and juicy tissues of the central leaf or stem. Depending on the phase of stem development in which the mites fed, characteristic signs of damage appear. When young stems are damaged before they emerge into the tube, the central leaf turns brown (a type of Swedish fly damage). Such stems do not produce ears, remain thin, and an interception in the form of a ring is noticeable on the outside. With later damage, the ear becomes white: having opened the leaf sheath, you can notice a zigzag twisting of the stem slightly above the upper node. The upper internode is significantly shorter compared to the internode of healthy stems. On damaged areas of the stem, a gray coating of moldy fungi or pink coating from Fusarium mycelium appears.

The grain mite, like the Swedish fly, by its damage reduces the productive tillering of grain crops, as a result, the number of ears in the crop is significantly reduced. According to our records, in the Moscow region, damage to the stems of spring wheat, oats, and barley by the grain mite ranges from 5 to 20%. Very severe damage is observed on cereal grasses, especially on river floodplains. According to M.I. Ovchinnikova (Rodionova), stem damage reaches 63-70% in red fescue, 41-49% in bentgrass, and 10-36% in timothy grass. The intensity of damage to cereals is related to the year of their use: in crops in the first year of use, damage to stems remains within 1-8%, and in the third year it increases to 25-40%.

Control measures

. Peeling and deep autumn plowing after harvesting spring and winter grains cause the death of mites remaining in the stubble. Observing the correct rotation of crops in crop rotation is of great importance. Sowing grain crops for several years in a row contributes to the accumulation of grain mites. According to V.A. Farafonov, the damage rate of barley when sowing winter wheat or oats reached 16-18%, and for potatoes for two years in a row - no more than 1%.

If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl+Enter.

The parasite has been found, further steps to destroy it

If a flour mite is found, combating it should begin immediately.

First, you need to carefully put all spoiled food in a garbage bag and take it to a bin away from the house. Don't forget to tidy up your closet. The surest way is a vinegar solution. After this, dry the shelf thoroughly with a hairdryer. Make sure there is no debris or crumbs left in corners and crevices. To do this, use a vacuum cleaner.

Another important detail is the processing of cans and containers in which food and groceries contaminated with flour mites were stored. They need to be washed well with warm water, it is better to heat them afterwards and dry thoroughly. Only after this can they be used.

The flour mite is not dangerous to humans. But in some cases, if it enters the body with food, allergic reactions may occur, including loss of consciousness and respiratory arrest.

Are there any preventive measures?

In order not to encounter the problem of flour mites in the apartment, it is necessary to follow preventive measures:

1. Clean out your closet once a month. Remove excess crumbs, dust, etc.
2. It is better to store flour, groceries, legumes, dried fruits and other products in closed jars or vacuum bags.
3. Try to maintain the desired temperature. Do not allow the cabinet to be located close to the stove.
4. Flour mites cannot tolerate the smell of bay leaves. Place it around the perimeter of the cabinet, and you can forget about the problem of pests.

The flour mite is a common pest. In addition to the fact that it spoils food, it also leads to the formation of mold and the appearance of other microorganisms. After this, for example, grains are unsuitable for planting. It is necessary to carry out preventive measures to prevent the appearance of granary mites.

Ways to fight

Control measures against granary mites and prevention depend on the extent of the infestation. In the agricultural and food industries, special chemicals and equipment are used for this. It is important not only to destroy the pest, but also to prevent contamination of products with toxic substances, which in the future may negatively affect the quality of flour or the germination of grain as planting material.

It is irrational to carry out such treatment at home. First of all, it is necessary to destroy the affected supplies by immediately throwing them out of the house. Then you should thoroughly rinse and disinfect the cabinet, paying attention to crevices and nooks. If necessary, this procedure is repeated several times.

Supplies that end up in the same cupboard with contaminated flour also often become a habitat for granary mites. Therefore, it is better to get rid of all groceries located in the “danger radius”. This is unprofitable from an economic point of view, but will help avoid re-infection, which is not uncommon.

Special means

The destruction of granary mites in elevators is carried out using drugs that contain hydrogen fluoride as a component. After processing, the grain is covered with a thick film, which enhances the effect. The pest population dies within 24 hours.

Insecticides are also used to combat granary mites: “Detia”, “Fostek”, “Fostoxin”.

The use of chemicals is a last resort, because toxic substances still penetrate into the grain. Although insecticide manufacturers claim that this occurs in a negligibly small dose that is not capable of harming the product.

Folk remedies

Infection of flour with mites is an unpleasant, but also common event. Every housewife should immediately take measures that will save the remaining supplies from the voracious pest.

An effective folk remedy is a solution of vinegar in water (concentration - 1 to 2). The cabinet in which there are jars of flour and cereals is emptied of all contents. All shelves and interior surfaces are cleaned of crumbs, dirt and dust, and then wiped with diluted vinegar. This caustic solution, which has a specific odor, kills ticks.

Some people put strong-smelling foods in the cupboard: for example, a bay leaf or a clove of garlic. Indeed, this can repel barn ticks. But there is a high risk that products, especially flour and granulated sugar, will also absorb a pungent aroma and acquire a specific taste.

Preventive measures

It is almost impossible to avoid granary mites getting into storage along with food. Therefore, it is very important to observe a special regime and indoor microclimate that is unfavorable for these voracious arthropods:

1. Maintain a low air temperature at which the vital activity and reproduction of ticks is suspended. For climate control, special cooling systems, fans and air conditioners are used.
2. Air humidity should not be too high. Therefore, it is necessary to eliminate all sources of dampness in the room: for example, leaking pipes.
3. Maintaining cleanliness is an equally important point. It is unacceptable that the storage facility is free of debris, waste and dust.
4. Control of other pests: mice and rats. Rodents are carriers of the barn mite, spreading it throughout the room on their paws, tail, fur...
5. It is recommended to monitor the cleanliness of containers and vehicles in which products are transported.

These tips can also be used to prevent flour mite infection at home. At least once a month you need to wipe down the shelves and walls of cabinets, avoiding high humidity, which will harm your grocery supplies. Flour and cereals must be stored in tightly closed containers.

If there is a granary mite in your food, you should take the situation as seriously as possible before it brings a big one. The combination of cleanliness and the use of disinfectants will make pest control successful.