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Small Brown bug with white/yellow stripe
January 21, 2010
We have been finding these bugs in our kitchen and family room area. The bugs look like a beetle type, they are small dark brown almost black, with a white or yellow band on their backs. We normally find them in the morning laying on their backs on the hardwood floor. I want to spray for these and I am fearful that they are wood eaters. We live in a timber frame home from the early 1970s.
Jeffrey Feiler
South Central Pennsylvania

Larder Beetles

Dear Jeffrey,
Your wooden house is safe, but you are sharing your food.  It is time to clean out the pantry and search for the source of your Larder Beetle, Dermestes lardarius, infestation.  According to BugGuide, this cosmopolitan species will eat food stuff and museum specimens.  You may also need to check your trophy stag heads hanging above the fireplace or the bearskin rug on the floor in the den.  Generally, you need to find the source of the infestation to rid yourself of pantry beetles and general extermination is just a waste of money as it cannot target the source, especially if the Larder Beetles are in edible foods.  You should also check that bargain bag of dog food.

Daniel,
Thank you so much for the help. I thought they didn’t look like wood eaters, but we just moved down to PA from NH. Up there you had just mosquitoes and black flies (which ate my flesh and blood alot). Nothing else survived the winters for the most part. Southern PA has a zillion bugs, especially the annoying STINK BUG which I am convinced will survive nuclear holocaust, those things are more hearty then roaches.
Thanks Again,
Jeffrey Feiler

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