Weevils in Beans and Peas. ys 
seen crawling about among the seeds is the parent insect. Many of 
these fly from the storage room or house to the fields where beans 
and peas (Fig. 2) are growing. As the bean and pea pods develop, 
the mother weevil lays whitish eggs, either on the outside or within 
the pods. These eggs are so small that they are often not noticed, 
for they appear as mere white specks upon the pods. From these 
eggs there hatch white grubs that burrow their way through the pod 
into the soft developing beans or peas. Because these grubs are so 
very tiny, the holes through which they enter the seeds are too 
small to be seen unless one searches for them with a microscope. 
- Usually beans become infested first when they are nearly or quite 
full grown. As seeds expand and harden in the final ripening proc- 
HIG. 4.—Wagon loads of field peas brought to mill to be thrashed. Remember that the 
pea weevil, the broad-bean weevil, and the lentil weevil are the only weevils mentioned 
in this bulletin that can not breed in dried seeds in storage. For this reason any 
infestation by these weevils occurs only in the field while the crop is maturing ; 
hence the weevil grubs are in the seeds at the time they are harvested, shelled, or 
thrashed, and any treatment at that time, if done thoroughly, will prevent the develop- 
ment of holes in seeds resulting from the emergence of adult weevils. 
ess the holes in the skin through which the grubs entered become 
less and less easy to find. The wound in the skin either becomes 
entirely healed over or remains similar in-appearance to a small 
pin prick. 
Since beans and peas mature much faster than the weevil grubs 
within them, it happens that the weevil grubs are comparatively 
small or little developed, in many instances, when the crop is har- 
vested (see Fig. 4) and placed in storage. Thus many seeds that 
appear outwardly in excellent condition in reality have weevil grubs 
hidden away in their interior, as shown in Figure 3. 
