When you want to store maize you can use pills to kill any leftover weevils.
Often maize loss has to do with a bad storing management. If the maize is on the field for too long, it can rot and weevils destroy harvest. Furthermore, invisible aflatoxins can develop in maize. Drying the corn helps to prevent aflatoxins.
Maize Storage
40 days after you bend the maize, you should harvest it. Remove all ears that are rotted. When you have a shelling machine make sure whether it can remove the husk or not. If not, do it by hand. Never mix good and bad maize together, because unhealthy maize can transmit their diseases to healthy maize. For cleaning the maize you can winnow it with wind, a fan or on a screen. Make sure that the grain is dry before you store it. You can take some grains and bite on them or throw them in the maize bag to hear whether they sound dry or not. Make sure to always work in a clean surrounding. To keep the maize clean, always put it on a tarp. The granary should be in a dry and cleaned space. Let the maize cool down before you store it, because otherwise it can get moist as soon as it cools.
Pills against weevils
After filling the maize into the granary, cut a plastic bottle into two halves and fill it with pills. Use one pill for 400 pounds of volume. Put the bottle with the pills on top of the granary. Then close the granary tightly with a rubber strip. The pills spread out a gas which kills any remaining weevils. After 12 days you can remove the bottle and the ash, which the pills have produced. Therefore, you protect that the maize won‘t get poisoned as well. Make sure to not inhale the gas. After removing the bottle from the granary make a hole in the ground, lay the bottle and the ash inside and bury them. Whenever you get corn from the granary make sure to close it as soon as you are done, so that no weevils can sneak in.
