Fruit Flies

Fruit flies have been terrible for us this year. I made several apple cider traps and keep 2 in the kitchen and 1 in the bathroom. I throw away produce when it starts to spoil and take the trash out every day.

If sticky fly strips wren’t so nasty looking Id try that too. There is a small soffit piece over the kitchen sink that would hide a 6″ long fly strip pretty well.

Maybe I need to start washing all non-refrigerated produce every day. But, that’s a hassle.

How do you deal with fruit flies?
Blaming them on the dog doesn’t work either.

Out of spite I put bowls of apple cider vinegar in a oven with the door cracked open. When I see bunch in there I close the door and decide on conventional or speed bake.

“I like the way you talk mister”.

A big help is to wash produce when you bring it home, especially bananas.

The spray I used that actually worked is no longer being made I guess.

Brian Klawitter wrote:

The spray I used that actually worked is no longer being made I guess.

DDT?

I thought mine were fruit flies, but after 2 weeks of bringing no fruit or vegetables in, they were there just as thick if not worse. I started seeing more in the sink and bathroom area, so i googled it and found out there is such a thing as drain gnats, who the hell could live over 50 years and never here that crazy idea before. So bleach and vinegar in the drains, with a small cup with cider vinegar and dish soap covered with saran wrap did the trick in a hurry. I found that setting the cup near the drains helped alot.

Supposedly fruit flies can lay eggs in sink drains. Not real sure how that happens when the drain gets used multiple times a day.

Also they lay 200 eggs at a time.

I think I’ll douche my drains with Clorox and see if that helps.

I hate those things! Bananas are the worst for importing them into the house. I think a small jar or cup with maraschino cherry juice is the best bait. Each night I dump out the juice with the drowned flies and put another inch or so in it. After a couple days they’re usually gone.

If you have a garbage disposal put a whole bunch of ice cubes down it. That helps knock all the food debris out of the mechanism. Then poor bleach or something similar down the drain

I rinse out all the beverage cans and spray the (can) compactor with “OFF”. If I don’t do both I get an infestation of those pesky flies.

This is from what I have heard ob a news cast. They usually do not come from the fruit you buy, but they fly in when you are entering or leaving your home. All it takes is one female to lay eggs on a food source such as bananas or an empty beer can and within a couple days, you have lots. I now live in an upstairs apt and have not had any the last 2 summers. I leave bananas sitting out and do not wash any fruit with an inedible peel.

When I used to get them, I did the cider vinegar thing and I also put a banana peel in a plastic bag and left it open for a few hours and then sneak up on it and quickly close the top. A long skinny bag such as a newspaper one work good.

Take a small glass Like a shot glass or any small glass, fill it up about halfway with wine, and stretch saran wrap over the top of it. Then take a pin and poke three or four or five holes in it, very small pinholes. It will amaze you how many fruit flies it’ll catch

Pailofperch wrote:

maraschino cherry juice is the best bait.

You may be onto something there. We’ve all heard the old wives tale about catching more flies with honey. So I’ve started an experiment. I cleaned and refreshed my 3 apple cider traps and made 3 more with corn syrup. I sat one apple cider and one corn syrup trap about 2″ apart in 3 different locations. Which ever catches the most fruit flies will be my control. Then I can test other baits.

This a whole new meaning to fly fishin, fruit fly fishin.

Some might hate me for this tidbit I learned while studying up on an enemy. If you see one that has landed on your food or beverage, even for just a moment, it likely already laid some eggs. This helped confirm my belief that a beer is instantly tainted by them. I have a sensitive nose..

I’ve made a revolutionary discovery that has eradicated over well 90% of my fruit flies in just a few hours. It’s an ancient hillbilly secret that died off with rotary phones and horse crops. A marvelous low tech example of form following function. Something so fast and effective that fruit flies are powerless to avoid it.

In fact this is such a powerful method that I’m afraid to share it online since it could be used for good and evil. You would have to promise me that it would only be used judiciously for good.

Can you guess how I solved my fruit fly problem?

The microwave. Or just eat the fruits and veggies instead of letting them sit on a countertop.

You stopped buying fruit?
You filled your house with spiders?

I think they do give you more dang spiders indoors.

The tiny hole in saran wrap worked wonders for me last year. An open jar would just lure in one or two. The almost covered jar would catch dozens.

They do not like air movement. A fan will defeat them. I washed in/around/under the garbage disposal flap in the drain with comet.

They do like the wet from kitchen drains and will flock to an open drain. I’ll drop a denture cleaning fizzy in the drain, broken up to get past the catch basket and let it work. That helps eliminate the odors that attract them to the moist environment.

As Josh suggests, fans help keep them out of things so we also leave our kitchen fan run on low all day and its just enough air movement to keep fruities away. Right now our countertops has tomatoes and cukes on it all the time and now with sweetcorn on a regular basis bugs/flies are a real menace. We keep a covered compost pail on the counter top and everything trimmed from any veggie or fruit goes directly into that and its emptied a couple times a day. I keep two traps active on the counter top too but still a guy can’t let the guard down on these pests or they’ll fill the house.

Nah, I’ve gone from having 2 or 3 dozen fruit flies on the kitchen ceiling (I guess it’s a bit warmer there) each morning to this morning there were only 2 survivors on the ceiling.

How’d I do that practically over night?

I was fed up and got medieval on their butts.

I used a flyswatter!

I jousted with those suckers for several hours taking out my frustrations in unbridled ruthless fury and reckless abandon. I think every surface in the kitchen was littered with caresses.