The existential threat of pea weevils

Question regarding pea weevils and soup peas. Apologies if this belongs in a different pest forum.

I live in an area of south central Washington state at 2700' elevation where very little in the way of a hardy or short-season dry keeping legume will grow hence I grow a pole variety of soup peas. This is especially helpful for a meal during Lent. However, last year, I had these dried out, harvested, threshed and winnowed in a dry storage and lo and behold pea weevils had gotten into and decimated our crop. I never knew this was a problem and now want to be very vigilant for this spring/summer 2024's soup pea crop. Sadly, I can forgo keeping seeds for future landrace growth if it means feeding my family.

Thus, I am under the impression that after you let the crop dry out completely, you should immediately freeze the dry soup peas and this will kill any pea weevil larvae before it burrows and destroys the soup pea? Or is there a better way to handle this? Thank you for the feedback. My little girls, bless their hearts, are not very fond of eating extra protein in the cooked soup peas.

Following some prepper advice I stored 5 gallons of  dried beans with two cups of diatomaceous earth mixed in.
It's been good for a couple of years,  but I haven't  checked it lately.

I use salt when storing beans, rice etc.

As far as I know not much can live in salt.

I like your suggestion of putting the peas/beans in the freezer to kill the weevils.

A few ideas other than freezing:

- beans for food (rather than seed) could be roasted before storing. Link below suggests heating to at least 140 would kill larvae. I know a traditional food in Estonia was roasted mixed grains and peas ground into coarse meal. Perhaps this treatment helped kill off pests.

- vacuum storage or otherwise de-oxygenating the storage container may kill bugs or at least limit their survival.

- I have read that aromatic leaves like bay, tobacco, thyme were used to ward off pests in some places, but don’t know how effective that is against pests hatched from within.

Here is a handout from University of Nebraska about pest management in stored food: https://extension.usu.edu/pests/schoolipm/files/pest-id-handbook/Fabric_and_Pantry_Pests_2012_IPM_Manual.pdf

Another way of reducing the losses due to insect pests is by cutting off oxygen: if your grain is stored hermetically, with very little air, the pests cannot grow much.

Here an article about trials with maize in Benin.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7469259/

Other storage methods burned a candle to lower the oxygen content in the container.

My biggest concern with the pea weevils is actually stopping them before they become larvae and burrow into the pea. I'm curious at what point will the larvae actually start burrowing and wonder if I can salvage the pea by harvesting dry while the larvae is still on the outside of the pod. I believe that I harvest early enough to prevent any larvae from becoming mature adults, however, the notion of eating the larvae that has already burrowed into the pea is not the most appetizing in my humble opinion. Please, someone dispel me of this idea and assure me it's all going to be ok.

I found this interesting link for anybody who needs help further clarifying and responding to the problem: https://plantwiseplusknowledgebank.org/doi/10.1079/pwkb.species.9907

If I'm reading this right, soaking dry soup peas for an extended period of time prior to eating them will crack the pea  and release any pest inside? I don't mind split peas...

Now, there is also a recommendation on planting early to avoid the pest reaching adult stages: "Timely harvesting and threshing reduced the number of seeds with weevil emergence windows (Mihiretu and Wale, 2013)."

I'd be curious to know what are key temperatures as far as pea germination, flowering, and then attraction to pea pollen and actual laying of eggs leading to development of larvae, etc.