3 Tiny Flying Beetles In The House That Cause Expensive Damage

Beetles in the house can pose a severe threat to your food and expensive materials like woolen carpets, silk, and leather clothing and accessories.

In this guide, you’ll find three tiny flying beetles in the house that enter your home to lay eggs and infest.

You’ll also learn what attracts these tiny flying beetles with hard, shiny shells to your home, how they sneak inside, and how to get rid of these flying beetles.

Keep reading.

What Are The 3 Types Of Tiny Flying Beetles In The House

The most common tiny flying beetles in homes are carpet beetles, drugstore beetles, and click beetles.

These beetles are tiny, and two of them, carpet beetles and drugstore beetles, can trick you into thinking that they’re fruit flies or drain flies when you notice them flying around in your home.

Each of these beetles has its reason to enter homes. You’ll find out later in the post why, when, and how they enter your home.

But for now, it’s important to know that carpet beetles and drugstore beetles are the ones that can cause serious damage to specific items in your home.

Click beetles are harmless, and they’re accidental intruders to your home. 

Let’s dive into each of these tiny beetles that sneak inside your home.

Carpet Beetle – The Tiny Flying Beetle That Enters Home To Lay Eggs

Carpet beetles are small black or brown flying beetles. Many carpet beetles also have tiny brown and white stripes on them.

They’re known as varied carpet beetles but they belong to the same species.

An adult carpet beetle can grow between 1/8 to 3/16 of an inch in length.

There are also carpet beetles that are greyish with white spots on their back. 

But most of the time, you’ll find carpet beetles as little black beetles in the house that look like tiny round black hard shell bugs.

Adult carpet beetles are outdoor bugs, and they’ll feed on the pollen and flower petals. 

So, why do carpet beetles enter your home? There’s a compelling reason for it.

And the reason is to lay eggs. 

Adult carpet beetles will lay eggs on materials made of animal products. 

So, products made of silk, feathers, fur, wool, and leather will target carpet beetles to lay their eggs.

And why do they do it?

It’s because the larvae that come out of these eggs feed on these products. Animal products are the carpet beetle’s larvae’s food source.

The larva of carpet beetles looks like a tiny brownish or blackish worm with bristles of hair on its body.

Before turning into adult beetles, the larvae will make a cocoon to hide in it. They’ll emerge out of the cocoon, known as the pupa, as adult carpet beetles.

Signs Of Adult Carpet Beetle And Carpet Beetle Larvae

Adult carpet beetles are easy to spot. If they’re inside your home, you’ll notice adult carpet beetles flying inside your home.

You’d also notice them on your carpets and rugs made of wool or silk.

Adult carpet beetles can even sneak inside your closet, wardrobe, and dresser drawers to lay eggs. 

The signs of carpet beetle’s larvae are two – their physical sightings and the damage that these larvae cause.

The carpet beetle’s larvae cause damage to your expensive fabrics, shoes, and woolen carpets.

The damage is in the form of tiny holes which they create while they chew on them. 

Carpet beetle larvae can also cause damage to the cotton fabrics and bed linen. There have been numerous instances when people have observed these larvae on the bed.

Many types of bed worms can be on your bed, and the carpet beetle larvae are one of them. Many people also confuse bed worms and the carpet beetle larva on the bed with bed bugs because of its tiny size.

Drugstore Beetles – The Tiny Shiny Brown Beetle That Invades Kitchen

Drugstore beetles are roundish or oblong-shaped tiny brown beetles with shiny backs. These beetles are pantry pests, and they infest stored food, especially grains, cereals, and dry food, in jars and packets.

Drugstore beetles became pretty rampant in pharmacy stores where they were destroying medicines. That’s how they got their name.

Also known as biscuit beetles, drugstore beetles will lay eggs in stored food. And the larvae from the eggs will feed and discharge their feces on the stored food.

When their numbers increase in your kitchen and home, drugstore beetles show up in places like countertops, kitchen cabinets, and even in your bedroom. 

Unlike many other beetles, drugstore beetles are not flat. They’ve got a humped back, and their mouth is tucked under their head. 

Signs Of Drugstore Beetles

Drugstore beetles leave behind no infestation signs that can tell you that they’re there inside your home.

But you’ll notice drugstore beetles buzzing around in your home. You’ll also see holes in your food packets and food storage jars.  

The food that the larvae of these beetles infest will grow pale, and you might also notice lumps, especially on grains and cereals.

These lumps feces of drugstore beetle’s larvae that they discharge on the food they infest.

Click Beetle – Tiny Black Beetle In House That Is Harmless

Click beetles are the only beetles that don’t cause any damage to your home, and they also don’t lay any eggs inside your home.

Click beetles are accidental intruders to your home. But these beetles’ larvae, which are known as wireworms, are damaging pests to your garden.

Wireworms cause damage to vegetable plants, especially tomatoes, onions, and carrot plants.

The shape of click beetles isn’t round. Instead, the click beetles are long, black and the adult click beetles are 1.5 inches long.

It’s one of those long skinny black bugs in your home that sneaks inside your home for no apparent reason at all.

When on their back, these beetles make a clicking sound while trying to get back on their feet. That’s how they got their name as click beetles.

How Tiny Beetles Enter Your Home And How To Get Rid Of Them

All of these tiny flying beetles are attracted to electrical light. So, that’s one of the things that draws these small beetles to your home.

These beetles will fly inside your home through open doors and windows. 

They’ll also sneak inside your home through tiny gaps and cracks on the walls, doors, and windows.

These tiny beetles can also be present in the things that you bring inside your home, like potted plants, firewood, and cardboard boxes.

Drugstore beetles can already be inside the food packets and grain packets you buy from the grocery stores.

Large grain warehouses always have pantry pests in their storage areas. And that’s how many of these pantry pests get inside your home too.

Getting rid of these tiny flying beetles inside your home isn’t a special task. Anyone can do it. 

And thankfully, you don’t need any pest control skills to do it.

But you’ll also have to take some steps to prevent them from entering your home.

The best thing that you can do to get rid of these tiny beetles is clean your home.

Vacuuming your home and cleaning your kitchen is the best way to get rid of these beetles.

To ensure that there are no drugstore beetles inside your kitchen, clean your kitchen thoroughly. 

And check all the food storage jars and shelves for these drugstore beetles and their larvae.

Discard any damaged food and replace the storage jars that are thin with thick airtight jars.

To get rid of carpet beetle larvae, again, cleaning the home and keeping the stuff made of animal products clean and protected is the best way.

Scattering diatomaceous earth on infested items like carpets and then vacuuming it is also an effective way to eliminate the carpet beetle’s larvae.

Also, don’t let dirty clothes and fabric pile up for long. They attract adult carpet beetles. 

To stop these beetles from entering your home, seal off any cracks and crevices on walls, windows, and doors. 

It’ll be best if you use silicone-based sealant to do the work. Silicone-based sealants are strong, they last at least for a decade, and bugs can’t chew through them.

Using weather strippings on doors and windows also covers the gaps on them, which stops these beetles from exploiting those gaps to fly inside your home.

Protect your home from these beetles by installing window shields with fine mesh on the windows of your bathroom and kitchen. These window shields will not let these beetles and other bugs that light fly inside your home attracts.

Using light bulbs that don’t attract bugs comes in very handy too. Install them in your garden or yard, doorways, and patio decks. 

These light bulbs will not attract these tiny flying beetles and other flying bugs to your home.

Electrical lights also attract flying bugs like flying ants and flying termites that inflict expensive damage to your home. 

So, it’s always a good idea to have these bug-repelling bulbs installed in your yard and outdoors.

Inside your home, you can also use a homemade beetle trap to catch these beetles. You need to make a mixture of apple cider vinegar and dish soap in a bowl.

Keep them in places like in your kitchen or where you’ve noticed them often. These beetles will get attracted to the mixture, but the dish soap will make them stick in the bowl.

Summary

Three tiny flying beetles sneak inside homes – carpet beetles, drugstore beetles, and click beetles.

Carpet beetles and drugstore beetles have the potential to cause damage to the products they infest. But click beetles are harmless, and they don’t cause any damage to anything inside your home.

However, the larvae of click beetles, known as wireworms, are vegetable plants damaging pests.

Vacuum cleaning your home and keeping your kitchen clean is the best way to get rid of these small beetles. 

We don’t recommend using any insecticide to get rid of these tiny beetles because you don’t need them.

Also, sealing the cracks on your home’s walls, doors, and windows, using window shields, and installing bug-repelling light bulbs prevent these beetles from sneaking inside your home.