INSECTS INJURIOUS TO STORED GRAINS AND 
THEIR GROUND PRODUCTS 
By A. A. GIRAUI/T, assistant to state entomologist 
It is well known that many kinds of insects live in wheat and 
other grains and in meal and flour, either accompanying the grain 
to the granary from the field, or going to it after it is stored. 
Many, indeed, go with it from the producer to the customer— 
thru cribs, elevators, mills, and warehouses, to the retail store, and 
thence to our homes. Insects of these habits are particularly hardy, 
and many are so far omnivorous that they may live and multiply on 
food which seems to us to contain no nourishment. All are either 
beetles or their larvae, or the larvae of moths. The latter are of 
fewer kinds but of greater capacity for mischief than the former. 
At any particular time and place, half a dozen to a dozen of these 
insects may be present, working in various ways, some of them, 
indeed, not directly injurious but feeding on chaff or other granary 
debris, and obnoxious merely by their presence. Of the others, 
one or more may be injuring individual kernels of grain in a way 
to make them unfit for food and to prevent their growing if sown; 
or one may be webbing together flour and meal in mills, making 
them useless for food, and also clogging some parts of the machinery 
by webbing together masses of flour. Further harm may be done 
by causing fermentation in the stored grain. The percentage of 
actual injury may not be large for the whole mass infested, but 
the mere presence of considerable numbers of these insects reduces 
the value of the grain or flour, and may interfere seriously with 
its sale. 
Over fifty species live habitually or occasionally in stored cereals 
and cereal products in the United States, but only about ten of 
these are of the first importance. Seventeen are habitual grain 
eaters, but the food of the others is comparatively miscellaneous, 
including granary rubbish, decomposing substances, cloth materials, 
and dried animal matter. Those which are regarded as of prime 
importance are the Angoumois grain moth, the Mediterranean flour- 
moth, the Indian meal moth, the meal snout-moth, the confused 
flour-beetle, the granary weevil, the rice-weevil, the saw-toothed 
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