The Khrushchaks or Flour Khrushchaks are beetles of the genera ( Tenebrio and Tribolium ) of the Darkling family.
| Group of animals | |
|---|---|
  Greater Flour Khrushchak (left) and the club-headed flour hrushchak | |
| Title | |
| Khrushchaki | |
| Title Status | |
| not determined | |
| Parent taxon | |
| Tribe Tenebrionini | |
| Childbirth | |
| |
Large flour Khrushchak ( Tenebrio molitor ), 12-16 mm long, black or brown, emits a sharp unpleasant odor. The larva (flour worm) is light yellow. Distributed throughout Europe, lives in houses and warehouses in flour, bakery products, bran, and is rarely found in soil and rotting wood.
Small flour Khrushchak ( Tribolium confusum ) is similar to a large, but smaller (3-4 mm long), red-red. It is widespread, damaging flour, bakery products, cereals, peas, tobacco. In warm rooms gives several generations a year.
Also common are the maceous mealworm ( Tribolium castaneum ), the horned mealworm ( Gnathocerus cornutus ), and the Lesser Black Hrushchak ( Tribolium destructor ). During mass reproduction, the hrushchaki spoil the flour they have populated, which becomes lumpy, acquires an unpleasant smell and taste, and becomes unfit for food.
Basic preventive measures: preparation, cleaning and disinfection of storage facilities, processing enterprises, territories, machines, mechanisms and warehouse equipment; compliance with sanitary and hygienic rules for storing products; cooling them in cold time to 10 ° C and below.
Chemical control measures: wet, aerosol and gas pest control; gas disinsection of grain products.
For wet disinfection of empty rooms, KZMV, polychlorpinene, thiophos, chlorophos, trichloromethaphos-3, DDVF and others are used; for aerosol generators - technical hexachloran in green, diesel or solar oil, insecticidal drafts; for gas - chloropicrin, dichloroethane and methyl bromide ( cyanide and discoid hydrocyanic cyclones are used for processing mills, cereals and feed mills). Food, feed grain and seed peas are aerated with chloropicrin and methyl bromide.