Help! What are these bugs?

A few weeks ago we noticed some beetle like insects in some dry food (flour, crackers, teas, sugar), and threw the food out. We looked around and thought we had gotten rid of them all. But then just a few days ago we noticed some tiny version of them inside an electric whisk. We started looking further and these tiny versions were everywhere! We did a massive cleaning session and chucked out a lot of food and even some infested kitchen equipment. Thought we had done good, but then we started to notice these tiny versions all over the place - not just the kitchen! We are finding them all over the kitchen/living-room: they seem to love the fireplace's 'mineral paint', under carpets, under chopping boards, in corners of the skirting.

We thought they might be 'flour beetles' but after looking at the larvae pics online we don't think so as the small versions we find are not worm like and can move pretty fast when they want to.

Please see the attached photo showing the adults (which we don't see anymore) and one of the small yellowish versions of the beetle. They are tiny, so hard to get a clear photo but hopefully it provides enough info to identify them. We've looked online but can't find anything that looks like these.

Huge thank you in advance for anyone who can help. We are battling them daily, but being so small we feel getting them all will be impossible, so something else also needs to be done other than just manually hunting them.

Thanks,
Mike

 

I think we have two different insects here. The smaller yellowish insect is not related to the beetles, in my opinion. They may live in proximity to each other but not the same insect.

The fact that you aren’t seeing the beetles is a good sign. While I can’t ID them specifically I’m sure they are a stored product pests as you discovered early on. Their gestation period can be most of a year sometimes so control is slow to attain. As you see less and less adults that is a good sign.

If you can get a better picture of the smaller insects maybe I can ID.

For now, look up “psocid” images and see what you think.

 

Thanks so much for the help PAbugman. We REALLY appreciate it!

I googled 'psocid' and they look a lot more like the small ones we are seeing. After reading a bit about them though, it says they like moist places and will usually only go on food which is old/moist/mouldy. We had them in new fresh dry food so make us wonder if this is what they are.

We also wondered if these two things were separate bugs too. Hmmm... it's a bit puzzling because we did see the large ones in the flour earlier on and now these ones are everywhere. Maybe somehow we got to infestations at the same time!!

Will se if I can get a better photo when I find another live one (very hard to keep them 'in tact' after dead as they are so small and end up squished even with a light touch).

Off to continue cleaning! ....

Thanks again for the help!

 

Thanks for the the input Luke. Luckily they don't look like those bed bugs!

We hoovered like crazy yesterday so the kitchen/living room is looking more under control now. But still have a ton more do to today. These things are so tiny it'd be easy to miss them, and presumably just one missed is enough to start it all over again! Argh...