Webs in Your Cereal? You Have Indian Meal Moths.
Found webs in your cereal? It's Indian Meal Moths. Learn how to purge your pantry, use pheromone traps, and stop them from coming back.
You pour a bowl of granola. You look down. The raisins are clumping together with sticky white webbing. And there is a tiny worm wiggling in the milk.
Congratulations, you have Indian Meal Moths. We call them Pantry Moths.
Here is the gross part: You probably brought them home from the grocery store. They hide inside sealed boxes of grain, pasta, and dog food as microscopic eggs. They hatch in your pantry, eat your food, and spin webs.
It's Not Just Flour
People think they only eat flour. Wrong. I've found them in dried chili peppers, bird seed, chocolate, and even decorative corn wreaths. If it is dry and plant-based, they will eat it.
The "Sex Trap" Solution
Trying to squash the flying moths is a waste of time. You need to stop the breeding.
Go buy Pheromone Traps. These are sticky triangles that release a scent that smells like a female moth looking for love. The male moths fly in, get stuck, and die. No males = no eggs.
The Purge
This hurts, but you have to do it.
- Throw it all out: Anything that is open (bags of chips, flour, rice). If it wasn't in a hard plastic or glass jar, it's trash.
- Vacuum the cracks: The larvae crawl into the shelf peg holes. Vacuum them out or they will hatch next month.
- Freeze the new stuff: Put new bags of flour in the freezer for 48 hours to kill any hitchhiking eggs.