Latin: Niptus hololeucus. This spider beetle is studded with long golden hair. It infests the same types of products as the first two mentioned spider beetles. When occurring in a warehouse it is often because it has been able to eat dead insects, dry carrions or rodent droppings. The adult golden spider beetles do bite […]
Wasps
Latin: Vespoides spp. The wasp is a wide category that covers digger wasps, parasitic wasps, hornets etc. Wasps are well known in their black and yellow striped abdomens and no less for their ability to sting. In Northern Europe there are about a dozen species of social wasps, which are very similar to each other […]
The pharaoh ant
Latin: Monomorium pharaonis. A tiny, bright yellow ant. The workers are only approximately 2 mm long. It is originally a tropical species, which has spread across the world through imports. In Northern Europe it has been known since the 1920s. In Northern Europe, the pharaoh ant depends on heated buildings. The pharaoh ant is most […]
The common black ant
Latin: Lasius niger. This is the species most frequently encountered indoors. An ant colony usually consists of a dozen thousand ants, and the colony is placed in the ground. In buildings, the ants establish colonies in cavity walls and under floors. Outside, they have a certain fondness for building colonies under tiles. They penetrate anywhere […]
Hymenoptera
The hymenoptera include ants, wasps and bees. They, like beetles, moths and flies, have complete metamorphosis. The larvae are limbless, blind and pale maggots. There are two pairs of transparent flying wings with relatively few but clear ribs. The rear wings are always smaller than the front wings. Mouth parts are arranged to either suck or […]
Fruit flies
Latin: Drosophila spp. Also called vinegar flies. Fruit flies are quite rich on species. We know more than 6000 different species, but only a few of them are found indoors. Adult fruit flies are 3-4 mm long, yellowish brown. They typically fly quietly. The larvae are yellowish-white maggots. Pupae almost look like small brown seeds. […]
The cheese skipper
Latin: Piophila casei. Also called the meat skipper. The small dark cheese skippers lay their eggs in dairy products, meat products and in excrements. Each female lays up to 500 eggs, which are placed in crevices directly in food or in the vicinity of food. At 27-32 ° C the eggs hatch in one day […]
The grey flesh fly
Latin: Sarcophaga carnaria. 11-13 mm long, gray striped chest and typically chequered abdomen. Just as the blowfly, the female grey flesh fly also seeks out dead animals to lays her eggs in. Grey flesh fly eggs hatch as soon as they are placed so in principle they give birth to live offspring.
Blowflies
The many species of blowflies normally live in the wild. Inside you can meet the heavy, blue-black blowfly, for example the species Calliphora erythrocephala and the slightly smaller, green-metallic shiny gold flies of the genus Lucilia. Blowflies lay their eggs, the so-called flyblow, in dead animals and other decaying organic materials (excrement, cheese, etc.). The […]
The common house fly
Latin: Musca domestica. Originates from warm climates, but is now widely spread everywhere. An adult house fly is 8-9 mm long, with a wingspan of 13 – 14 mm. Females seek fresh manure or rotting or fermenting plant material and lay eggs there. The eggs are laid in clumps with approximately 100 eggs and a […]
Flies
( Latin: Order Diptera) Flies belong to the two-winged superfamily that with more than 80,000 different species includes all flies and mosquitoes. The two-winged family have one pair of wings. Almost all other insects have two pairs. The small, club-shaped bodies behind the wings of flies and mosquitoes are during escape very active. The wings […]
Plaster beetles
Latin: Clavicornia spp. The name plaster beetle is an umbrella term for a part of the beetles of the genera Cryptophagus, Lathridius, Enicmus, Cartodere and Mycetaea. They are often considered as a group because they have a uniform biology, they are found in the same places and they all belong to the superfamily Clavicornia. Their […]
The smooth spider beetle
Latin: Gibbium psylloides The smooth spider beetle lacks hair and is rather reminiscent of a small glass drop that moves slowly around on its long legs. It occurs as a grain pest in warm countries such as India. Like the other spider beetles it can live of a wide range of dry animal and vegetable […]
The white-marked spider beetle
Latin: ptinus fur. The white-marked spider beetle appears in the same type of products as the Australian spider beetle, that is, in dry organic substances. It is not as common as the Australian spider beetle in storages, but it is common in nature. Males are elongated, with almost parallel sides, while the female has round […]
Spider beetles
Spider beetles are closely related to furniture beetles. They look somewhat like spiders. The adults move quite slowly around on their long legs. There is a clear narrowing between the chest and the arched abdomen. Spider beetles often play dead when disturbed. Most of the species rarely use their wings and usually the beetles are […]
The black-legged ham beetle
Latin: Necrobia violacea. Also called the cosmopolitan blue bone beetle. This species is blue shiny metal coloured. It is especially common in dry carrion, but can also infest the same types of products as the other types of copra beetles.
The drugstore beetle
Latin: Stegobium paniceum. 2 – 4 mm long, reddish-brown and hairy. It is widely spread all over the world. It lives in bread. Not freshly baked bread and the like, but the hard baked goods or stale, dry bread. It lives in various products: biscuits, dog biscuits, cookies, cereals, rice, pasta, herbs and pharmaceuticals to […]
The dark flour beetle
Latin: Tribolium destructor. A dark brown beetle that is 5-6 mm long and 2 mm wide. The larvae can be up to 10 mm long, plump and wormlike. Both the dark flour beetle and its larvae look like small versions of the yellow mealworm beetle and its larva, the mealworm. This species originates from Africa. […]
The yellow mealworm beetle
Latin: Tenebrio molitor. Its larvae are probably best known as those mealworms that are sold as animal feed. It is a rather large beetle, 1.5 cm long. The yellow mealworm beetle lives in birds’ nests, where the larvae feed on the food spills that accumulate in the nests when the young birds are fed. The […]
Flour beetles
The species which we refer to as flour beetles are similar to each other by occurring in flour and other cereals. These beetles are flat, elongated, shiny beetles with almost parallel sides. The prothorax is quite broad. The largest of the species are black, the smallest maroon. These beetles belong to the family of darkling […]
The rust-red grain beetle
Latin: Cryptolestes ferrugineus or Laemophloeus f. The genus Cryptolestes is a complex of several species that are all very similar to each other. They can all occur in grains, bran, flour and the like, often in very large numbers. The rust-red grain beetle is 2 mm long and it is uni-coloured. The sides of the […]
The merchant grain beetle
Latin: Oryzaephilus mercator. Looks somewhat like the saw-toothed grain beetle but differs from it by the size and shape of a small outgrowth behind the eye (p. 50). In households, it is as common as the saw-toothed grain beetle, but it is not seen in grain stocks. The merchant grain beetle prefers nuts without shells […]
The saw-toothed grain beetle
Latin: Oryzaephilus surinamensis. 2.5 – 3.5 mm long, slender and brown-black. The distinctive features are the serrated growths on the prothorax side edges just behind the head. It cannot infest whole, undamaged kernels and it mainly eats seeds. In goods of cereal origin, flour and grain in particular, it is one of our most common […]
The various species
The insects which are referred to hereafter are grouped by relationship that is relatively easy to recognise after looking at our visual key in chapter 4. Within each group is listed the species most frequently encountered in food in western countries.
Behaviour
There is nothing to suggest that the insects consider their behaviour. When insects do something that looks reasonable, it is due to the innate, appropriate behaviours – that are built into their nervous system – that are triggered under certain conditions in response to certain environmental influences. Most of our knowledge about the storage pests’ […]
Insect senses
All living creatures must have sensory organs that receive information about the outside world, and a nervous system, which can convey the data to be translated into appropriate behaviour. The senses on which insects rely are very much the same, as we know them from ourselves. This means sense of touch, hearing, vision, heat and […]
Insect development
Most insects lay eggs. Some insects like cockroaches and crickets have offspring that looks a lot like the grown insects. However, they do not have wings, their genitals are not yet developed and they often have a different body shape and colour compared to the grown insects. Insects go through a number of development stages […]
Internal
Insects have similar organ systems to the one we know from people, but they are often built in different ways and may lie elsewhere in the body. Insect central nervous system is placed just opposite to vertebrates. The intestinal tract is basically a tube that leads from mouth to anus. A few large salivary glands […]
Insect appearance
Unlike vertebrates, insects are built with their skeleton on the outside of the body. This is known as the exoskeleton. It is made up of a system of sheets and veins interconnected by thin, elastic skin. The result is that the sheets and veins are moveable in relation to each other, which is the same […]
Some insects are unhealthy to eat
Many insects make a decent meal, but some of the pests which can be found in food can lead to disgust or even be directly unhealthy when eaten in bigger amounts. A research study with 60 volunteers eating a live maggot, 50 of them experienced sickness afterwards. However, it did not lead to sickness when […]
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next Page »