Did you open your cupboards one day to find really tiny, moving bugs all over the place? We did, unfortunately. After talking to people we knew, we found out that many of them had the same problem at one time. We had never heard of this before, so we were unprepared. We found out the beetle’s name is the sawtooth grain beetle which I believe has an official name of Oryzaephilus surinamensis.
We found the grain beetles in every single one of our unopened cardboard boxes. The beetles can apparently fit into 0.4 millimeter openings (very small) but some of the boxes seemed so sealed. We recently read an article saying the beetles can actually chew through the cardboard. This seems to make sense in our situation.
Pictures of the Sawtooth Beetles
You might be like us and look at pictures of the beetles on the internet and think “there’s no way this is what we have, ours are so small.” Keep in mind that the pictures are enlarged many times. I finally realized that they really were actually those beetles after seeing a picture of the bug next to a grain of rice. Even though to me they looked like a tiny black line rather than a small version of a long beetle, appearances are deceiving.
Our microscope was packed away in an unknown dimension; otherwise we would have loved to see these guys up close. They are so small but caused us so much grief! They are hard to get rid of once they infiltrate your cupboards.
Cleaning thoroughly and properly storing food in sealed containers to keep them away from a food source is probably the best way to keep them at bay. Don’t be surprised if you keep seeing them for weeks after you discovered the problem. They can hide in the tiniest of spaces. We threw out all the opened food packages and everything in cardboard boxes. We took all the contents out of the cabinets, washed thoroughly, and kept everything out until we no longer saw any sign of them. They live in tiny cracks in the cupboards, unfortunately, so cleaning doesn’t get rid of them. For us it was around 2 weeks time before they dwindled to nothing. Keep all crumbs cleaned up!! You don’t want to let them start up again. We lived with our food and cupboard contents on our kitchen table for two weeks; not much fun.