The dust and wind in West Texas conspire to keep front steps and porches coated in a layer of grit. But in Socorro and other rural communities near El Paso, another nuisance has plagued residents for months: red flour beetles.
The beetles are a persistent problem inside and outside of people’s homes. State agencies such as the Texas Department of Agriculture and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service are working to find a long-term fix.
Patrick Porter, an entomologist based in Lubbock for Texas A&M AgriLife, is one of the scientists who’s helped look for a solution to the beetles. He spoke to Texas Standard about the pest problem. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: You were called out to Socorro to help find a solution to this red flour beetle infestation. Can you describe what you found out there?
Patrick Porter: Well, yeah. So back up. Red flour beetles [are] found worldwide – a little over eighth of an inch long. Red, coppery-looking beetle. They fly out of these shells at night, generally at night, and just get in the air and go get into houses.
So they’re just everywhere.
They’re everywhere. Every little crack and crevice, under shingles in the attic through the plumbing. They get in food. A lot of people in Socorro and the surrounding communities are throwing away their food. Many of the houses have hundreds and hundreds every night come indoors.
But when you start piling up its food source – in this case, pecan shells – it inoculates the pile and builds up to huge numbers, billions in big piles over a year or so.
And so, Socorro, what happened there is that those shells were then taken and distributed. Like people’s yards – they don’t have grass because they don’t have enough water, but they have dust. So they put these shells out.
Well, now we know that the New Mexico, El Paso area has had a big pecan industry for a long time. It’s not like those shells are new. Why are we seeing this infestation now?
Well, our working theory has to do with volume of shells. The industry used to be local and regional. But now that area is a shelling hub for much of the country. So they’re bringing pecans in from other states.
So they’re shelling a whole lot more pecans than they used to. But all they can do with the shells is pile them up. And so it’s these piles of surplus shells that the beetles have learned to colonize and reproduce in.
Now, I understand that the Texas Department of Agriculture is in the middle of trying to remediate this beetle problem once and for all. But I’m wondering what that involves.
Well, they’re part of the answer. And A&M’s part, and the people in Socorro and the city government’s part.
But I need to back up and say this is not just Socorro. There’s a string of towns down to the south, and it’s like Socorro, San Elizario, Tornillo, Fabens and Clint. They’ve all got the problem.
And so what TDA has done is gotten access to some vacant land in Hudspeth County, which is east of El Paso County, where Socorro is, where pecan sellers can take their new crop shells and go dump them and spread them out on that big area. And then the already infested shells need to go to the local landfills.
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But once you take those old infested shells and you put them into landfills, you’ve got the new shells that go in place. What’s to keep the beetles from returning to those new shells?
If they’re left in piles? They will return. The pile is the problem because it creates zones of comfortable temperatures and humidity and water that the beetles can move through the pile and be totally happy.
But when you spread that stuff out, it is far more hostile to the beetles. They can still live in it. But their reproductive rate goes way down.
I see. Is this a long term solution, as you see it, or are we going to have to use pesticides and other approaches?
Well, I don’t think it’s the long term solution. And we do have the technology for the pecan shellers to treat their shells as they come out of the plant with an insect growth regulator that will effectively keep the insect from developing for over a year. And then they can go ahead and pile them up.
But the really long term thing is to find a value added use for broken shells so that people want to buy them. Right now, it’s a waste product.
Is there anything else in particular that folks need to be aware of? I’m thinking do these beetles pose a problem to agriculture out there? You mentioned how it leads to a lot of food waste and that sort of thing. But this has got to be more than just a nuisance, it sounds like.
Let’s start with the nuisance thing. What I didn’t talk about was the mental anxiety. If you have beetles raining down on you while you’re sleeping and they get in your mouth and your ears… Some people don’t like that.
Many people spray their house and the next morning it’s full of beetles again. So they spray it again and they are swimming in insecticide in some of these houses because it takes a couple of days for these insecticides to work. And the beetles keep coming in.
So, you know, I’ve seen where people can’t work. They’re up all night. They’re worrying they go to work, their performance slips. It causes friction between husband and wife and children. Children go to school with beetles in their lunch boxes.
There’s more to it than just they don’t carry disease. You know, as far as agriculture, it’s not a threat at all to plants growing in the field. The beetle is evolved to live in a protected area with the food all around it, so it cannot thrive and reproduce out in the wild. So that’s not a problem.
