Want to know what those tiny black bugs look like poppy seeds are doing in your home? Figure out which one it is from the five common ones in the article below.
If your home is suddenly attracting a large number of tiny black bugs that resemble poppy seeds, you’d want to find out what they are.
Many of these insects can trigger allergic reactions, leave nasty bites, or damage your home.
While there are numerous tiny bugs that are black, we’ll be checking out five insects common in US homes.
Black Weevils
Popularly known as pantry bugs, black weevils can prove to be quite a nuisance by destroying your cupboard foods and grains.
These bugs have slender, black bodies with long snouts that make them easy to identify. There are several subspecies of black weevils, such as the rice weevil, maize weevil, bean weevils, etc.
As you might notice, they’re named after what they tend to infest and feed on.
Do they bite or harm humans and pets?
While black weevils can cause considerable damage by destroying your foodstuff and grains, they don’t bite and are harmless to humans and pets.
Can they spread disease?
None of the weevil species spread any diseases to humans or animals.
Can they get in the house?
Yes, finding weevils in your kitchen isn’t unusual as long as you have stored food grains or anything they can feed on.
How to get rid of them?
You’ll have to clean your pantry completely to get rid of these pests. Use hot soapy water to wash the insides of your kitchen cabinets after removing the weevils and their larvae with a vacuum cleaner.
Where do they lay eggs?
Black weevils tend to lay eggs in the grains they infest. This is why you might find these bugs even in packaged grains.
What are they attracted to?
These bugs are especially attracted to moisture and the presence of food.
Spider Beetles
Although spider beetles closely resemble spiders or large mites, they have six legs, and scientists classify them as bugs.
The American spider beetle, also known as the black spider beetle, has a shiny and globular abdomen and yellowish or cream-colored hair on the legs, thorax, and antennae.
The color of this bug ranges from deep reddish brown to black. These beetles feed on a variety of dry plant and animal matter, which may include dried foods stored in your pantry.
Do they bite or harm humans and pets?
You need not be afraid of spider beetles, as they neither bite humans and pets nor harm them in any other way.
Can they spread disease?
These bugs do not spread any diseases among humans. However, food infested by spider beetles wouldn’t be safe to consume,
Can they get in the house?
Spider beetles usually live indoors and stay in wall cracks, crevices, and attics.
How to get rid of them?
To get rid of spider beetles:
- Throw away all the infested food and clean the space thoroughly.
- Store your foodstuff in safer places and make sure the bugs can’t access them.
- Ensure proper ventilation and keep your home clean in general to keep away these bugs.
Where do they lay eggs?
These bugs usually lay eggs on plant leaves or in containers of stored food.
What are they attracted to?
Dark, damp, and moist areas tend to attract spider beetles, especially if there’s plenty of organic matter like bat and rodent droppings for them to feed on.
Bed Bugs
If you are already familiar with bed bugs, you likely know that these pesky insects hide in the bed and feed on human blood.
Apart from their disturbing feeding habit, their bites also result in itchy welts on the skin. Dark brown (almost black) in color, these bloodsucking insects have flattened, and oval bodies and are 0.16 – 0.2 inches long.
Do they bite or harm humans and pets?
Yes, the main issue with these insects is that they suck human blood by biting into the skin. Although they don’t live on pets, these bugs may still bite your pet on contact.
Can they spread disease?
Bed bugs do not spread any diseases, but they might trigger allergic reactions in some individuals.
Can they get in the house?
Bed bugs can easily get into your house by hitching a ride on an item you bring home from an infested place.
How to get rid of them?
A steam cleaner will help you eliminate bed bugs, with the heat killing them off. For a large bed bug infestation, you may need a pest control professional to deal with it.
Where do they lay eggs?
These insects lay their eggs on or near a bed, usually on the seams and the joints of a mattress.
What are they attracted to?
Bed bugs are attracted to carbon dioxide, blood, and warmth.
Ticks
Among the five bugs covered in this article, ticks present the biggest problem. These troublesome pests not only attack both humans and pets to suck blood but also spread a variety of diseases.
Ticks are very hard to notice due to their small size – even adult ticks might be just 0.11 inches long. Upon drinking blood, these pests bloat into globular shapes that closely resemble poppy seeds.
Do they bite or harm humans and pets?
Ticks bite humans and animals, burrowing into the skin to attach themselves while they feed. A tick bite can be very painful and cause swelling and burning.
Can they spread disease?
Ticks can spread various diseases to humans and animals, including serious infections like Lyme disease.
Can they get in the house?
Ticks mostly live outdoors, and indoor environments aren’t humid enough. However, ticks attack pets (especially dogs) very often and may carry them home. Few species of ticks prefer to live indoors.
How to get rid of them?
You may use a steam cleaner or an insecticide spray to eliminate ticks.
Where do they lay eggs?
Ticks lay eggs on open surfaces such as soil, leaves, blades of grass, etc. If you have a tick infestation in your home, the bugs might lay eggs on your clothing or in undisturbed corners of your home, garage, or dog kennel.
What are they attracted to?
Warm, moist, and shady environments attract ticks.
Black Oriental Cockroaches
A black oriental cockroach infestation in your home is a cause of concern because they carry various diseases.
Unlike most cockroaches, these nocturnal bugs are black. However, while baby cockroaches can be tiny, the adult ones can grow up to 1.2 inches in length.
Do they bite or harm humans and pets?
Oriental cockroaches bite both humans and pets, but it’s quite rare.
Can they spread disease?
This is the biggest issue with these pests – they spread various disease-producing organisms, mostly by contaminating food. They are often responsible for causing diarrhea, food poisoning, and dysentery.
Can they get in the house?
Oriental cockroaches can get in your house by crawling through cracks and holes, hitchhiking on bags, or simply flying inside.
How to get rid of them?
You can use diatomaceous earth, bait traps, or non-toxic and natural insecticides. For heavy cockroach infestations, look for pest control companies near you.
Where do they lay eggs?
Female oriental cockroaches lay their egg capsules in protected areas close to a food source. This makes filthy corners and kitchen cabinets ideal breeding grounds.
What are they attracted to?
These bugs are especially attracted to damp and dark spaces with decaying organic matter.
Wrap Up
Knowing what pests are infesting your home and taking the necessary steps to eliminate them will help keep your family, your pets, and yourself safe.
Some of the other tiny bugs that look like black seeds, such as the black carpet beetle, can also damage your soft furnishings and carpets.
Some of the food-infesting bugs even contaminate pet food. Hopefully, the information you found in this article will prove to be useful but don’t hesitate to seek professional assistance if you can’t identify the bugs.
Reader Emails
Black bugs in bed and pantry are a constant source of emails for us from our readers, both past and present.
Read through some of these emails to learn more about some of the surprising things that might infest your kitchen and remain incognito, like a poppy seed.
Letter 1 – Fern Spores
Location: Monterey Park, CA
December 1, 2010 10:48 pm
Hello,
I’ve looked high & low on the internet in my attempt to figure out what these are but I give up. I imagine they are eggs. By naked eye I thought each black ”raspberry” to be an individual egg, but now that I look at my photos they look a bit more intricate than that.
They were found on the back of chrysanthemum leaves on a flower arrangement today. I am very curious to know what they belong to.
Signature: joAnn
Hi JoAnn,
We have not had any luck with a conclusive identification, but we do not believe these spore-like things are insect related. Rather, we believe they may be the spores of some type of Fungus, but we would eagerly welcome assistance from our readership. We found a site dedicated to Chrysanthemum Diseases and Insect Pests an American Gardening online book page on Chrysanthemum rust, and a Chrysanthemum Plant Health Problems page, but nothing seems to exactly match your photographs. Whatever they are, they are so evenly distributed.
Correction: Fern Spores
Those are the mature spore capsules of the plant itself, which is a fern, not a chrysanthemum leaf. You mentioned it was from an arrangement, so I’m guessing the florist added them to give the arrangement volume, since ferns are quit inexpensive and hardy.If you touch them you’ll get the black dust-like spores on your fingers, but I’ve never heard of anyone having any adverse reactions to them. They may fall off the leaf and make your table dusty though.
Giorgana
Hi Daniel,
Thank you so much for the identification. Ironically, I had just photographed it again as your email came in. I was observing that nothing had hatched but there was now a fine black dust in the container I put the leaves in. I then started to think spores but never did I think they were a part of the plant. My guess was more along the lines of a fungus or something parasitic.
As for the flower arrangement, it didn’t occur to me that what I has was something other than chrysanthemum leaves!
Again, thank you very much for the ID on this. Now I’m going to try to propagate fern 
Have a nice weekend.
joAnn
Ed. Note: We hope joAnn becomes a successful entrepreneur of cultivated ferns.
Letter 2 – Unknown Black Things found in Home probably a Rodent’s Stash of Pokeweed Seeds
Location: Portland, Ct.
December 7, 2014 7:23 pm
for the past few years I have discovered piles (100+) of these tiny bead sized, black, shiny, hard shelled eggs. There only found in my basement. two piles were found in my garage. One was in a drawer of a RubberMaid rolling cart and the other large pile was on a open cabinet shelf piled high in a corner. when I touched the pile they all collapsed as if they were wet at one point. the other piles were in the cellar in a large plastic storage bin and also in my storage bag for my Christmas tree.
I took a picture with a microscope app the magnified 8xs and I will also include a few in my hand for a prospective.
Signature: Susan Popielaski
Dear Susan,
These look more like seeds than bug eggs to us, but we have no explanation regarding why you found them or what they might be. Interestingly, we just received another nearly identical identification request from Massachusetts, so we feel compelled to research this more. Termite Pellets also come to mind, but they look different from Termite Pellets we have seen in the past.
Thanks for replying. We don’t have termites..we did have a ant problem that we eradicated. I’ve done research as well and found that some insects eggs are seed imposters,?
The piles are sort of glued together in a type of thin transparent sac. As soon as you touch them with slight pressure they break free and the tidy pile collapses.
Keep me posted, my FB friends are as curious as I.
Best,
Susan.
Some ants may stockpile seeds, but we believe that is a very remote possibility.
Update: April 12, 2015
Thanks to a comment from Teri, we believe this is a Rodent’s stash of Pokeweed seeds which are pictured on the Ohio Perennial & Biennial Weed Guide.
Letter 3 – Unknown Black Things found in Drawer probably Rodent’s Stash of Pokeweed Seeds
Location: central MA
December 10, 2014 9:49 am
Hello,
Recently I noticed the bottom drawer of my desk was sticking and little hard black seed like things were falling out to the floor when I opened it. Today I pulled the whole drawer out and found it was loaded with these seeds in the runner area of the drawer. They are black, hard, and fairly circular. They do not look like mouse droppings to me. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Danielle
Signature: Danielle
Dear Danielle,
We do not believe these are mouse droppings, and interestingly, we just posted a nearly identical identification request from Connecticut. We do not believe they are either eggs or seeds. Our best guess is Termite Pellets at this time, but the black coloration is unlike any Termite Pellets we have seen. We will continue to research this matter and perhaps one of our readers has a better suggestion.
Update: April 12, 2015
Thanks to a comment from Teri on a different posting, we believe this is a Rodent’s stash of Pokeweed seeds which are pictured on the Ohio Perennial & Biennial Weed Guide.
Letter 4 – Possible Pokeweed Seeds are suspected Rodent’s Stash
Location: Northwest Ohio
April 12, 2015 10:21 am
Thanks bugman, here are the photos of my mysterious seeds / bug droppings
Signature: Jeffrey
Dear Jeffrey,
Thanks for submitting your images after providing a comment on a similar Seed posting on our site. After much deliberation, we agree with a comment by Teri that these are Pokeweed seeds based on an image on the Ohio Perennial & Biennial Weed Guide, and that they are a rodent’s seed stash.
Thanks
Good that they are seeds,
Bad how they got there
Thanks a lot!
Jeffrey
Letter 5 – Black Seeds found in Home probably Rodent’s Stash
Location: Yardley, PA
January 14, 2016 12:10 pm
Today I found a pile of these black eggs nestling in the folds of a clean but not recently used bathmat. The cold weather just hit this last week but up until the first week of Jan 2016 it has been an unusually mild winter. The eggs look like seeds but they cannot be seeds as there have been no plants upstairs in this second floor bathroom. The mat has been sitting under the sink on this tiled bathroom floor for 1 to 4 months. We live in an old farmhouse and wear layers as we prefer to heat the house in zones and only during our active hours.
Can you help me identify these eggs so I can address this potential infestation appropriately? We don’t like chemical bug sprays so I’m crossing my fingers that these pasts will be relatively easy to expunge!
Signature: Devon
Dear Devon,
We received several requests some time back with a similar situation and we surmised that the piles were a Rodent’s stash. Later we identified the seeds as Pokeweed Seeds and we still maintain that a resourceful rodent created a stash of seeds to use as food during the cold winter months.
Daniel you are fabulous! I’m pulling out my stash of unused mouse traps and suspect that the field mice I am catching downstairs have decided to migrate upwards. My intention is to send them heavenward!
Bless you,
Devon
Letter 6 – Rodent’s Seed Stash
Location: Canton, OH
February 24, 2016 11:59 am
I have now found 2 piles of these mysterious seeds in various piles of clothing. I cannot for the life of me figure out exactly what it is and how they appeared. They’re mostly flat, semi-shiny, light to medium brown, and slightly pointed at one end. I’ve google searched to my whits end but absolutely nothing looks like these….flax seed-looking…droppings? I have NO idea but a few days after I found this pile, the entire pile was gone. GONE. As in disappeared. I’m not kidding!! Help!
Signature: Scared and Alone In Home
Dear Scared and Alone in Home,
Though we cannot tell you what kind of seeds you found, we are very confident that they were put there by a rodent. Mice will frequently gather seeds and provision them indoors where conditions are comfortable, but where food is scarce. We have several postings of Poke Seeds found indoors, but your seeds are different.
Letter 7 – Mouse’s Food Stash: Pokeweed Seeds
Location: Pillow case and bed in RI
January 6, 2017 10:05 am
Hi, I just went into our guest room..(seldom used) and found these little black beadlike things all over the bed and discovered that they came from deep inside the pillow case!! There is hundreds of them…really hard but you can smash them…kind of white inside, or cream colored? The bed was slept in last night so it was unmade…I discovered these things all in the sheets but definitely the source was the pillow case…OMG! We live in Rhode Island in an old colonial style home, but I had the Pest guy over recently because we thought we heard a squirrel or something int he house but he found no evidence….what is this? Can you please help?
Thank you in advance…
Margaret Scully
Signature: Little black things
Dear Margaret,
We have several postings in our archive that are similar, and while we have always suspected that this is the result of a rodent, like a mouse, stashing away seeds indoors, we eventually identified the actual seeds as Pokeweed Seeds. Our suspicion is that a rodent was squirrelling away seeds in anticipation of a harsh winter.
I have contacted the pest control guy and he is coming Monday…. Thank you so much for the identification, I am indeed consoled… and happy that it wasn’t aliens.
Have a wonderful New Year,
Margaret
Letter 8 – Seeds found in Home
Geographic location of the bug: Windham, New York
Date: 12/15/2017
Time: 10:07 PM EDT
Hello!
Thank you for taking the time to read/look into our issue.
My wife and I recently acquired a vacation home on the Catskills in Windham, New York. We have discovered in a few locations very small stashes of what looks to me like seeds of some kind, but I am no longer sure what we are finding.
It is always inside a bed, or folded towels, or folded blankets or laundry.
We do know there are mice in this area, but from what I understand, they wouldn’t be just seeds but no droppings. We have setup mouse traps and will continue to setup more, but again we only find seeds and no droppings. Not around the house or along the walls or any if that.
There is snow on the ground outside, so my gut tells me it may be a squirrel or chipmunk, but haven’t heard any noises nor have we found any acorns.
I am submitting a couple pictures to try to help solve the mistery.
How you want your letter signed: George & Elena
Dear George & Elena,
Our best bet on this is that a rodent is stashing seeds inside your home as a winter meal. You wouldn’t necessarily find droppings near the food stash. We will be postdating your submission to go live to our site while our editorial staff is away for the holidays.
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