The Fruit Flies Are Winning

We get this problem in the spring. A cup of apple cider vinegar with a citrus flavored dish soap will do the trick, but it takes a few days. Red wine will work and leaving out a cup with some beer will work too. Until they are eliminated, keep the fruit in the fridge. I stored my bananas in the microwave temporarily last spring. And watch the citrus smelling cleaners for a while. After scrubbing my tub with some sort of orange scented cleaner, the bathroom was like an outhouse for a few days (yet another reason I now clean with vinegar) :)

I put a piece of fruit in a cup and cover it with saran wrap and poke a small hole in the top (big enough so they can get in, but small enough so they can't get out.) When there are some in the cup, simply release them outdoors! Good luck!

You will probably need to discard the fruit you have on hand first.

We had luck with a sticky fly strip (they are for flys, come in a thing that looks like a spool of thread kind of, you can find it at Walmart in the pest control area. You hang it, pull the strip so that it unwinds, and we put a glass or bowl of wine under it. Bring in new fruit, and keep it in the fridge for a week or so, untill you get rid of them. They lay eggs and re hatch and die really quickly, so once you get rid of the thing they like the most, they will even land on wet sponges, etc, so you may need to just put everything away that they are attracted too until you catch them on the strip. Apple cider vinegar in a large bowl helps too, and they drown in it if they land sometimes, but we have had the most luck with the sticky strip.

Also, run hot water in your disposal and run it for a while and make sure that there is nothing left in there for them to eat.

I hate those things, but I like to keep fruit out for my kids all the time. It can be such a pain! Oh, and we brought them home in the onions last time, so check your pantry for the oninons and the potatos too!

M.

Riley, you crack me up. My mother tells people "what in the world would you want with flys anyway?" when they say "you attract more flies with honey..." Then she says, if you really want flys, carry a sack of garbage! If you want to attract nice people instead of flys, don't seem like you are carrying around a nasty sack of trash!"

Try the sticky thing, it works, and your son will love looking at all the flys you catch! It is a cool science experiement.

TELL me about it. In fact, night before last, kiddo and I put out one bowl of vinegar and one bowl of honey to see which we really WOULD catch more flies with. Answer? Neither. The flies avoided both.

So last night I put out a glass of redwine.

Does the trick every time.

Sigh.

I'm sick. So I couldn't drink the rest of the red wine, so it was something of a sacrificing the bottle. Even pumping it, it'll have turned before I'm well. I'll put another glass out tonight.

Put the fruit in the fridge for a few days...eat the bananas...and be totally fruit free outside the fridge for 2-3 days. It should get better fast that way, and then, with the cooler weather, you should be able to have your fruit bowl back. We did that with our fruit, and it worked better than anything else I tried. Then we canned tomatoes, and some were rotting, so we got them back, but as soon as we disposed of the yuck tomatoes, they were gone within hours. I've tried the cider ideas and the wine and vinegar and nothing works like simply getting rid of the attraction.

I take an clean, empty glass jar (salsa or pickles usually) and put about a 1/2 in apple cider vinegar and two drops of dishsoap and swirl it around. Then plastic wrap rubberbanded to the top with holes large enough for the flies to get through. I hear red wine works really well too. They get in and can't get out, the dishsoap does something to the surface of the vinegar so they can't just sit on top of it.

Walmart has a bug zapper that looks like a tennis racket. I love that thing for those annoying things.

Take a small dish and add 1 tbls each of honey, vinegar, lemon juice and fill the rest with water. Take seran wrap and cover. Poke holes in it so the little pests can crawl in and then get trapped.

Or vaccuum them up and place all the fruit in the fidge.

I had/have the same problem and I researched it myself. I made a fruit fly trap and it helped a lot. Take a jar or old baby food container (you can use a bottle or the plastic kind) that you don't want to use again, put a piece of fruit in it--any kind will work, but bananas seem to draw them faster, then cover it tightly with plastic wrap. Poke tiny holes in the plastic--they get in and can't get out. In about 3-4 days you will see boatloads of the little pests. You can just throw away the jar. (funny you have the same name, last initial and are in the same city as I)

The redwine suggestion is your best bet. Don't leave the fruit out anymore. Stick it in the fridge.

I bought these "fresh bags" that seal the fruit off from air and keep the fruit fresh longer. During the last few days it's been pretty cold out so we have been keeping the window open and have seen a decrease in the numbers.

Last year we had this problem too but then I read somewhere that they hatch in the drains so if you pour a little bleach down each drain and let it sit before rinsing it down the drain with hot water, it kills them. It seemed to work well. I know a lot of people don't like bleach, but I don't like the flies even more..lol

The title of your post made me laugh! We are having the same problem right now. I tired vinegar and it didn't work. I will try the red wine!

Don't put a fruit bowl out.

im sure (hoping anyway) people have given you ideas. my sister and grandpa both are having fruit fly problems and they made some very effective traps. ive heard you can use anything from vinegar to wine... but put either in a cup to about half full; cover the top with saran wrap and poke small holes in it. the flies will go in the cup but not be able to fly back out. it seems to work well for them

do an internet search and see if theres anything to put in the cup that is more effective. maybe even simply putting fruit juice in would help.

Ugh, I recently had a fruit fly problem as well. I threw out all of the fruit on the counter - turns out that the grapefruit that looked perfectly fine on top, was moldy on the bottom!

To get rid of them I put a little bit of apple juice in a small cup, covered the cup with plastic wrap, then poked holes in the top with a fork. The holes need to be kind of small. Large enough for them to get in, but small enough so they don't get back out. They go in to get to the sweet juice but can't get out.

It took SEVERAL days, but eventually it worked. I googled it and found out that they live for 10 days :-(

I've used a small bug wacker for them. Put the fruit they seem to like the most at the bottom of the bug wacker. They fruit attracks the flies, the bug wacker solves your problem.

This also works very well for mosquitos.

Good luck to you and yours.

We get infestations all the time considering our life style with food. Well I live in an apartment so the exterminator was called. He came and dumped stuff down the sinks and the bathtub. Said that would help.

He gave me a home remedy about 5 years ago and whenever I have one it solves the problem in a week. For that matter it solved it this last week.

You take a plastic pop bottle, Two liters work best, Put in apple cider vinegar and a squeeze of any sort of dish washing soap. Shake it up and the top should be all bubbles. They are attracted to the vinegar yet will get stuck in the bubbles. Every time you walk by it put the cap on it and shake it up. Next thing you know your problem will be better. I can't have as big of them in the bathroom as I can in the kitchen and on the table so I use a little 20 oz bottle. It doesn't do the job quite as fast but it still works.

Just shake and there you go. Solved your problem. A vegans best friend is this recipe. It hasn't failed in 5 years.

I got a tiny little solo cup (or use a litle salad dressing container) and filled it up halfway with apple cider vinegar and a drop of dishsoap. Within a few hours I had mass casualties (the fruitflies)! Good luck!!!

I had the same problem. I was so disgusted that I put the fruit bowl in the fridge. A few days later, all fruit flies are gone.

K.
http://K..myshaklee.com

The apple cider vinegar and a drop of dish soap clears it up for me every time!