Pantry Pests in Georgia
By Mark Sargent, President of High Priority Pest Services · Updated October 7, 2026
Pantry pests are the one problem on this site where the honest answer usually is not a treatment. If you have small moths flying around the kitchen in the evening, or little beetles in the flour, the fix is finding the infested package and throwing it out — and spraying insecticide in a food storage area is close to the last thing anybody should do.
The other thing worth saying up front: this is not a hygiene problem, and it is not a sign of anything you did. These insects almost always arrive inside sealed packaging, having gotten in at a mill, a warehouse or a store. A brand-new bag of birdseed or flour can carry them straight into a spotless kitchen.
What You Are Likely to Have
- Indianmeal moth. The most common by a distance. Small moth, roughly half an inch across the wings, with the outer half of the wing a distinctly darker copper or bronze compared with the pale inner half. You will often see the larvae first — small cream-colored caterpillars — and the silk webbing they leave in the food.
- Sawtoothed grain beetle. Tiny, slender, dark brown, with a series of saw-like teeth along each side of the section behind the head. Flat enough to get into packaging that looks sealed.
- Cigarette and drugstore beetles. Small, rounded, reddish-brown, with the head tucked down so they look humped from the side. Despite the names they turn up in spices, dried pet treats, and decorative dried material.
- Weevils. Recognizable by the long snout. Usually in rice, whole grains and beans.
Where to Look, Including the Places People Miss
The obvious targets are flour, cornmeal, rice, pasta, cereal, oats, dried beans, nuts, and anything in a paper or thin plastic bag. Beyond those, the sources that get missed most often:
- Birdseed and pet food, especially large bags stored in a garage or utility room. This is the single most common overlooked source.
- Spices and dried herbs, including old ones at the back of a cabinet.
- Dried pet treats and rawhide.
- Decorative items — dried flower arrangements, ornamental corn, potpourri, grapevine wreaths.
- Old baking supplies at the back of a high shelf that have not been touched in two years.
- Rodent bait or forgotten food in an attic or crawlspace.
Indianmeal moth larvae also crawl away from the food source to pupate, often ending up in the corner where the ceiling meets the wall, along the top edge of a cabinet door, or under the lip of a shelf. If you are seeing moths but cannot find the food, look up.
How to Actually Clear It
The sequence that works is not complicated, and it is mostly you rather than us:
- Inspect every dry good in the pantry, not just the one you suspect. Open packages and look. Webbing, clumping, fine powder at the bottom of a bag, or anything moving means discard it.
- Throw infested material out, and take it out of the house rather than putting it in the kitchen bin.
- Empty the shelves completely, vacuum the corners, cracks, shelf edges and the holes for adjustable shelf pins, then discard the vacuum contents outside.
- Wipe down with soap and water. Do not spray insecticide where food is stored.
- Move what you keep into hard, sealed containers — glass, metal or rigid plastic with a gasket. Cardboard and thin bags are not barriers to these insects.
- Freezing a suspect item for several days will kill all life stages, which is useful for things you would rather not throw away.
Expect a few stray moths for a couple of weeks after you have found the source. Pupae already tucked into cabinet corners will finish emerging. That is not a failed clean-up.
When It Is Worth Calling
Most pantry pest problems do not need us, and we will tell you so. Call when you have done a thorough purge and moths keep appearing, which usually means there is a source you have not located — a spill inside a wall void, something in the attic, or a bag in the garage nobody thought of. Also call if it is a commercial kitchen, a restaurant or a food storage operation, where the stakes include an inspection and the sources are harder to isolate.
What We Do About Them
We inspect to find the source rather than treating the pantry, which is the part homeowners most often cannot finish on their own. Where treatment is appropriate it is applied to cracks, voids and non-food areas, never to food storage surfaces, and pheromone monitoring can be used to confirm whether the problem is actually resolved rather than guessing. Ongoing kitchen and structure protection is part of the Priority Pest Management Plan, and for food businesses there is commercial and industrial pest management.
If pests return between scheduled visits, so do we, at no extra charge. We are licensed by the Georgia Department of Agriculture and serve central and eastern Georgia.
Still Finding Them After a Purge?
Call or text High Priority Pest Services at (470) 474-2847. Tell us what you are seeing and where, and we will tell you what is likely driving it. Service is available within 24 hours, and our work is backed by the High Priority Promise: if pests return between scheduled visits, so do we, at no extra charge.
Schedule Pest Service
Tell us what you’re seeing and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours. Office hours are Mon–Sun, 8AM–6PM — and we’re available 24/7 for urgent problems, so call (470) 474-2847 if it can’t wait.
Where we treat this
High Priority treats this pest across the Lake Country, including Eatonton, Lake Oconee, Greensboro, Madison and Milledgeville. See all areas we serve, our current prices and the Georgia pest calendar.