"Fruit Flies!!! Help" Topic

Help, how do I get rid of these little guys?

I blame it on my 18 year old daughter – she's always taking food into her room and leaving it there. Now we're all painting our house and these little s really like getting into the walls…

It's winter (no snow yet) here and hovering a bit above the zero degrees C if that's important.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions…

Invite a genetecist over. He'll have them all in test tubes in no time.

Remove all the food sources; this may mean doing without things that can't go in the fridge like bananas. My wife likes to leave pears out in decorative bowls so we get the same problem.

If you have a compost bucket in the house to gather compostables for the bin, shut it down and send them right outside; if you are not doing the waste stream separation thing (in which case I envy you) then get the organic trash outside right away.

Stop buying any snacks your daughter likes (I have two sons, I know the drill).

Without food or egg-laying sites, they are only good for a couple of days.

Ive notice that they like the smell of vinegar ( I'm a hot-sauce fiend ) – Leave a glass with a half inch of vinegar hanging out in a 'target rich environment', the little swine will cluster in and drown.

Then again you can always pluck them out of the air with the hosey end of your vacuum cleaner

Wash your fruit as you bring it into the house

Keep the flies, lose the daughter!

Interesting little critters … did you know that they can live on crumbs down in the cracks of your floors for ages? Then you bring in fresh fruit and you say " where the heck did all of these fruit flies come from!"

I bred these for tarantula spiderlings and the like. :D Problem is my cultures petered out a few weeks ago.

So, yup, Perverticus is spot on.
Unless you want to release a few dozen tiny spiders around your house…? No, thought not.

There is an effective pesticide, pyrithrin (sp), it kills 'em fast. It comes in a concentrate. I use dto mix it with water and spray trash cans with it. Any liquid source mut be eliminated as well. Usually getting rid of the food will take care of them in a day or so.

I know that they can be a serious problems in bars/pubs, so there might be something to a few of the suggestions listed here involving the use of rum and alcohol:

link
link
link

There's lots more on Google, by searching under "fruit flies". Hope this helps.

CC

Both alcohol and vinegar are byproducts of yeast and bacteria respectively eating the sugar in fruit, which is why fruit flies are attracted to those odors.

A public service message from your local chemistry/biology teacher.

Would this be a good trap?
Put out a dish of soapy water. Not much soap is needed, just a few drops to drastically lower the surface tension.
Then, add some booze to attract them.
Drowned bugs.

I had a problem with the little s as well so I started putting my peels and cores into a plastic bag and throwing it into the fridge.

They eventually disappeared (also have spiders in the house, here and there).

Did not know about the vinegar, thanks to the good Dr. P for that one.

Vinegar eh? I've had them around my apartment as well lately.

I was working with something vinegary once, and they did seem to be unusually attracted to it.

I'll try out that trick.

White distilled Vin. doesn't work – either Cider Vin. or Balsamic Vin. does

Oddly enough most breeds of these guys like to live in drains. We have birds and have to feed them fresh produce daily. You can go by any bird store (I think I have seen them at walmart) and buy these round yellow fruit fly traps.

Here are more ideas…some are a bit looney sounding:

link

We use a white vinegar and baking soda solution to clean the drains. It has done wonders. Don't forget your shower drains and such as well.

I can't help much, but I do have a fruit fly related story.

This is back in highschool. I was walking along to class with two guys I knew (not 'friends' per se, but we had a couple of classes together) when one guy says he needs to swing by his locker, as he tossed a book the teacher assigned to us for english in there at the start of the semester and had forgotten about it (this was near the end of the term). As he starts to fiddle with the lock we hear this buzzing start on the inside. We look at each and go 'what the hell?' when the locker-opening guy realizes he had left a couple of apples in there 4-6 weeks ago. He finally opens the locker, with the buzzing getting louder and screams 'Fruit flies!!!!' as hundreds of the little s come pouring out of the locker! We were covered in flies, running around and yelling like morons, and scaring everyone else in the hallway to death. The school had a serious fruit fly infestation for the the rest of the year. :)

-Will

I was a genetics major at university and spent a few years breeding fruit flies (I can usually still ID males and females without using a microscope -scary!) for one of the researchers. We used to use funnel traps (see cloudcaptain's link for details) with yeast paste for bait, and they worked well. Your place will smell a bit like a brewery though.
Chris

Yep, funnel traps are the way to go.

If you have an old glass jar with a metal lid, you can punch a small hole in it with a nail (1/8" or so)…make sure it is going down. The metal that gets bent back works like a funnel. Fill it with about 1/2" of apple cider vinegar (probably the least obtrusive smelling fly bait). And set a few near where they congregate.

Used to raise geckos and the hatchlings were too small to eat much other than fruit flies. Unfortunately, from time to time the flies would get loose and we had to get rid of the strays. After I started keeping a jar next to each cage, never had any further problems with the escapees.