Return of the flies

From time to time over the years, I have complained about the appearance of what look like small black flies, floating of top of cooked red lentils (which, confusingly, cook to yellow). Something which I have not much noticed for a while.

Then yesterday, in the course of lunch, they came back.

Usual drill, gently fry a couple of finely chopped cloves of garlic in butter. Add a couple of coarsely chopped onions and continue gently frying. Turn off when they look cooked enough. In parallel, boil up five ounces of red lentils in a couple of pints of water. Simmer them for 40 minutes or so and then add to the garlic and onion. Simmer for a few more minutes. Add some coarsely chopped left over potato and a couple of inches of coarsely cut Bastides saucisson. Simmer for a few more minutes and serve with brown bread. At which point the dead flies appear, visible in the snap above. It is possible that whatever these specks are arrived with the saucissson, but I don't think so. The specks predate the saucisson by quite a few years.

Getting up close and personal does not add that much. Do I need to do something to deploy the right camera from the three available? 

Fortunately, I am not particularly sensitive to these particular specks and they do not detract from the pleasure of taking the stew, most suitable for a cold autumn day. Central heating notwithstanding.

Bard

Then this afternoon, I thought I would try Bard, neither Bing nor Google having turned up anything very conclusive in the past.

His first suggestion was fruit flies, with a hint that somehow they were getting into the lentil jar. When I said maybe a millimetre long, his second suggestion was thrips. Both suggestions coming with various suggestions about kitchen hygiene.

I then tried Google search again, which came up with reference 2. Where meal moths looked quite promising, but bean weevils looked even more promising. Maybe the black specks were dead weevils released from their pupal cases by cooking? Their life cycle seems to fit the case. With more info to be found at references 3 and 4. Weevils which started out in places like Columbia but which have now fanned out across the world. With reference 3 suggesting that the Soviets knew a good deal about them. Does Comrade Putin find time to keep up?

Bard, when further prompted about bean weevils, treating the prompt as new information (as it does), agreed that they was entirely possible too, rehashed the kitchen hygiene advice and suggested that 'if you are having problems with bean weevils, you should contact a pest control professional for assistance'. I wonder what the Rentokil man would make of me if I tried this on?

Last time I tried Sainsbury's and Tesco's, the best they could do was a packet of free lentils. Either they did not know about pests of lentils or they did not care to share. I don't suppose that I shall bother again.

So there the matter rests, for the moment.

And as far as Bard is concerned, if I can't find the answer searching the Internet by hand, why should I expect him to do any better? I shall try to give this one some more thought.

References

Reference 1: https://bard.google.com.

Reference 2: https://extension.umn.edu/product-and-houseplant-pests/pantry-pests-insects-found-stored-food.

Reference 3: http://agroatlas.ru/en/content/pests/Acanthoscelides_obtectus/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthoscelides_obtectus.