June, ’18] 
DOANE: STORED FOOD INSECTS 
313 
SOME PROBLEMS IN THE CONTROL OF INSECTS IN 
STORED FOODS IN CALIFORNIA 
R. W. Doane, Stanford University 
The critical situation in which we find ourselves at the present time, 
particularly as regards the food that we need for our allies and our¬ 
selves, strongly emphasizes the necessity of taking every step possible 
to prevent the loss of foods or food materials. 
The entomologists have been keenly aware of the importance of in¬ 
sects in this struggle for food, and since the very beginning of the war 
have been trying to bring before those in authority and before the 
people in general the important facts bearing on this subject. As a 
rule we have met with a hearty response when we have called for action 
along certain definite lines, but we have also met with disappoint¬ 
ments, for it is sometimes very hard to convince the uninitiated that 
things as small and lowly and despised as insects can play an important 
part in this great world war. 
But when one finds a mass of flour and excrement matted together 
by the webbing made by the larvae of the Mediterranean flour moth, 
or when one finds the dark ill-smelling flour beetles in the flour, or the 
weevils or their larvae in the rice or beans or other food products, it is 
not hard to convince the observer that something is wrong, and all 
agree that something should be done to correct this disagreeable state 
of affairs. 
Here in California where many insects breed throughout the year, 
we have paid but little attention to the insect pests of stored foods. 
Twenty-five years ago Prof. W. G. Johnson, at the time an instructor 
in Entomology in Stanford University, did a good deal of work with 
the Mediterranean flour moth in the mills around San Francisco Bay 
and a little attention has been paid to the larvae found in stored fruit. 
But little other work has been done. 
In a very hurried survey that we have made of about 100 warehouses 
and flour mills in Central and Southern California, while acting as con¬ 
sulting entomologist for the Federal Food Commission for California, 
we have found practically all of the common pests of stored foods in 
greater or less abundance. The Mediterranean flour moth is found in 
nearly all of the flour mills and is regarded by all as the most serious 
pest that we have to deal with in such places. The larvae spin their 
silken threads wherever they go, and as they go everywhere, all of the 
machinery, the elevators and shoots, as well as the flour in the bins and 
sacks, become covered or filled with masses of webbing which cause no 
end of trouble for the miller. 
