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August 15, 2005
Waiter, there's a Stegobium paniceum in my soup ...
Stegobium paniceum is the species name for the biscuit beetle (US: drugstore beetle, DK: brødbille). It's in the same family (Anobiidae) as the woodworm or furniture beetle. This small (3-5mm long) brown beetle thrives indoors at room temperatures. A tenacious muncher, it will easily chew through cardboard, paper, tinfoil, and apparently even lead, to get to flour, dried cereals, pasta, packet soup or camomile tea (about which more in a moment). The adults don't eat, they just make holes in things. Once the female has chomped her way into a nice bag of organic flour or camomile teabag (I think you can see where this is going), she lays a single egg, which hatches after a few days into a small white larva. But there can be a lot of female beetles making a lot of holes ...
We have/had a number of these beetles which set up home in our pantry. They got in the flour and they got in the camomile teabags. And there is nothing quite like making a fresh, hot pot of tea, pouring a nice cup and taking a good long swig, and then idly wondering what those little boiled white blobs are doing floating sadly at the bottom of the cup to spoil the whole tea-drinking business for you, not to mention that it rather ruins it for the little baby beetles, too.
Posted by daen at August 15, 2005 10:29 PM