2023 Little Easy Bean Network - Beans Beyond The Colors Of A Rainbow

[Pulsegleaner]

I'm TERRIFIED of bean weevils. I've never heard of anyone around here having those, and I can only pray that I've never come across them because our winters, being so bitterly cold, kill them off.

Thanks to some seed I got from Kenya, my room had bean weevils (well, Bambarra Groundnut weevils.) for quite some time. Luckily, they don't generally like to fly if they don't have to, so the only groudnuts that actually got hit were the innumerable leftover white ones that were all over the floor. And each weevil species seems to be host specific, as they seemed not to touch the lablabs that also were spread around (I DID sometimes find lablab beans with the "cookie cutter" holes in them, but these always turned out to be ones that had had them WHEN I GOT THEM (they're pretty close to a universal storage pest, it's just most places do something to kill them before they pack the stuff for food or seed sale.)

My bigger problem (and the one I still haven't solved), is the Larder beetles, since they'll eat ANYTHING (they're probably what was chewing on my corn) that stays in one place for any decent time (including book paper). The problem with getting rid of those is that It would require basically totally cleaning my whole room, and since they are tiny, my room has an awful lot of little hard to reach nooks and crannies (behind furniture, behind the radiator etc. where some can hide out.)

For a while when I first got my mini corn samples I also had a ton of grain moths (though how those differ from the pantry moths we already have I'm not sure). or why I have no complete ears from that time (no ears, or almost none, were pest free, so I couldn't leave any intact.)

 

[flowerbug]

Thanks to some seed I got from Kenya, my room had bean weevils (well, Bambarra Groundnut weevils.) for quite some time. Luckily, they don't generally like to fly if they don't have to, so the only groudnuts that actually got hit were the innumerable leftover white ones that were all over the floor. And each weevil species seems to be host specific, as they seemed not to touch the lablabs that also were spread around (I DID sometimes find lablab beans with the "cookie cutter" holes in them, but these always turned out to be ones that had had them WHEN I GOT THEM (they're pretty close to a universal storage pest, it's just most places do something to kill them before they pack the stuff for food or seed sale.)

My bigger problem (and the one I still haven't solved), is the Larder beetles, since they'll eat ANYTHING (they're probably what was chewing on my corn) that stays in one place for any decent time (including book paper). The problem with getting rid of those is that It would require basically totally cleaning my whole room, and since they are tiny, my room has an awful lot of little hard to reach nooks and crannies (behind furniture, behind the radiator etc. where some can hide out.)

For a while when I first got my mini corn samples I also had a ton of grain moths (though how those differ from the pantry moths we already have I'm not sure). or why I have no complete ears from that time (no ears, or almost none, were pest free, so I couldn't leave any intact.)

larder beetles aren't any fun but i think the sawtoothed grain beetles were much worse as they are so tiny they can hide really well. i brought them in with some winter-wheat or winter-rye and didn't even know they were in there until i was laying here on my comfy perch and they were crawling on my blanket. i'm like "What the heck is that!" i thought they were tiny ants at first. gladly to say i did get them under control and eliminated before i had to clean the whole room and the front closet (they'd made it there but not enough to get a new population going). i also had to empty my closets on the floor and one shelf up to make sure none were hiding and opening each box and checking them and making sure to knock any out that were hiding in the cardboard edges and cracks.

pretty much what i had to do was vaccuum a few times a day and check for any new ones roaming around. oh, and of course, get rid of the infested grains.

 

[heirloomgal]

DS was mulching dried bean poles with the shredder for about 45 minutes, and then we heard it - a bizarre, and loud, clanking noise inside the chamber. This $1,200 shredder is just over 1 year old and I bought it for shredding bean and pea plants, and random garden debris. DH took the casing apart and found the main shaft had broken right in 2. Unbelievable. Now we're caught in the million steps it takes to have it looked at by a small engine shop as per the retailers instructions to see whether they want to replace or repair. Luckily the machine was under warranty for 2 years. But the composite they used for the shaft is all wrong, it's a design fail. And it looks like we have no way out from under this. What a devastation North America's manufacturing sector has undergone. Everything is turning into junk and there are few viable alternatives.

 

[Alasgun]

As a Machinist my interest is pricked when you mention “composite shaft”! Are you saying the shaft is not steel?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

larder beetles aren't any fun but i think the sawtoothed grain beetles were much worse as they are so tiny they can hide really well. i brought them in with some winter-wheat or winter-rye and didn't even know they were in there until i was laying here on my comfy perch and they were crawling on my blanket. i'm like "What the heck is that!" i thought they were tiny ants at first. gladly to say i did get them under control and eliminated before i had to clean the whole room and the front closet (they'd made it there but not enough to get a new population going). i also had to empty my closets on the floor and one shelf up to make sure none were hiding and opening each box and checking them and making sure to knock any out that were hiding in the cardboard edges and cracks.

pretty much what i had to do was vaccuum a few times a day and check for any new ones roaming around. oh, and of course, get rid of the infested grains.

Ironically, that Kenya bag contained both the weevils AND some sort of bug that parasitized them (looked like a tiny housefly). Only guess which one DIDN'T set up a stable colony? (a fair number of both managed to fly out of the containers before I could catch them and drown them [that's what I did with the ones I caught] but, unlike the weevils, they seemed not to manage to find the weevil larvae and lay their eggs.

I think there may have also been a few of some other, non-weevil seed beetle, but those also did not seem to keep breeding.)

 

[heirloomgal]

As a Machinist my interest is pricked when you mention “composite shaft”! Are you saying the shaft is not steel?

A steel composite I guess is what DH meant? From my conversations with him about this, he tells me that there are like thousands of types of steel; as a designer in the mines he once saw ( and then had to fix) an 8 inch shaft on a crusher shear at a 45, and tells me that the way a shaft fails is indicative of the particular failing in the steel chosen for the application. Our shredder shaft broke on a 90 angle, and he thinks that it's likely made of some - I think I'm saying this right - carbon steel? But he said it could also be the steel batch as well, coming from China, I guess one batch to another can be really different.

When I looked at the broken shaft, my first thought was, that metal looks too granular? And apparently there are steels that would lack proper elasticity properties for certain jobs. I know nothing about metallurgy, but I'm thinking this is possibly why it broke. I asked him if he could contact the manufacturer for the steel type used, and he laughed and said they'd never tell him because it's proprietary info. Which is too bad, this is his field and we'd get a definite answer on why it broke if he could access that. Although, I guess it wouldn't fix the fact that even if the machine gets replaced it could break again, and they won't issue a refund in any case.

 

[Alasgun]

If that shaft is a crankshaft you are probably at the manufacturer's mercy; however if it’s a straight shaft, a local machine shop could make a replacement, from better materials.

It sounds like hubby is all over this And more knowledgable than most “home owners”.

He might be interested in this little project i undertook years ago; building a close replica of a G.E frame 3 gas turbine. It was a retirement gift for the man who once hired me.

 

[Artorius]

I have on one occassion received seed from someone in Europe that looked perfectly normal. Within about a week about two or three beans began to hatch out weevils. I put the ziploc packet in the freezer for about 5 days. Planted the seed that didn't have holes the following season and all was well. I got a nice crop of seed from that bean that summer.

Such situations happened to me too. If I didn't have other seeds, I sometimes sowed those with holes left by weevils. One or two holes do not affect germination as long as the embryo has not been damaged.

 

[Decoy1]

have on one occassion received seed from someone in Europe that looked perfectly normal. Within about a week about two or three beans began to hatch out weevils. I put the ziploc packet in the freezer for about 5 days. Planted the seed that didn't have holes the following season and all was well. I got a nice crop of seed from that bean that summer.

I believe I’m the guilty party, for which I profoundly apologise, and was dismayed to hear at the time. I’m not sure what happened as I routinely freeze seeds, but somehow that packet must have missed the process. I’ve been extra careful since then!

As Artorius says, seed will usually germinate if it has a hole. Here we often harvest fava beans with holes, but with P vulgaris the weevils hatch later and it’s rare to see holes when first podding them. Luckily, freezing the seed by about late November means the problem is contained.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I believe I’m the guilty party, for which I profoundly apologise, and was dismayed to hear at the time. I’m not sure what happened as I routinely freeze seeds, but somehow that packet must have missed the process. I’ve been extra careful since then!

Decoy 1, Actually it wasn't you that I got the weevily seed from, it was someone in Portugal. So don't feel bad about my weevil experience.