How do I deal with fruit flies?

Factual Questions
1

My therapist keeps changing the subject every time I bring it up. :smiley:

I love fresh fruit and usually have loads of it, as I am a big fan of my juicer. Sometimes it gets pretty ripe, but not ripe enough to throw away, and riper fruit usually makes the best juice. Anyway, there are hundreds of fruit flies swarming over my fruit bowl as we speak and the thought of fruit fly larvae growing in my fruit really grosses me out. I know I can just wash the fruit before I eat it but it’s nauseating to see fruit flies constantly swarming around my kitchen.

What can I do? My referigerator produce drawers are already filled with vegetables and I don’t want to keep the fruit in plastic produce bags(in the bowl) because it looks trashy. Has anyone found a way to deal with this problem? Unsightly fly strips? Sonic pest eliminators?

And if I did get a fly strip, is there a chemical on it which attracts flies to land there? …What an awful way to die…

2

Well, you could try collecting and breeding them, learning about genetics in the process. That’s what I’d do…

3

Occasionally I get a fruit fly problem too. My remedy is pretty simple:

  1. Take a vacuum and vaccum the swarming flies (hit the fruit bowl several times to make them swarm up and suck em up in the air).

  2. Throw away the fruit and everything else in the area that the flies might be breeding on (don’t put them in the trash - put them in a bag and dump them outside your house).

  3. Wait a few days for any remaining flies to die off.

That should rid your house of flies totally. If there’s no food they won’t breed. Once they’re dead, you can put the fruit back safely. Usually that gets rid of them for months for me. My advice is though - ripe fruit is ok, but be vigilant about throwing out overripe/rotting fruit and washing the bowl out every so often to get rid of fruit juices that might be on it. Your juicer may also be a problem if your leaving it unwashed for a day or two - wash it out right after you use it.

4

Discovered by accident in my filthy dorm room during my year studying in Japan.

  1. Never empty your garbage and get a nasty case of fruit flies.

  2. Buy a bottle of cheap sake and have some frineds over.

  3. Leave the body open and partially finished on your book shelf.

  4. Come back a week and half later and realize the fruit fly problem has miraculously diappeared! Realize that it is finally time to clean up the room to prevent future infestations.

  5. Go to throw away the bottle and look what’s inside: hundreds of little fruit fly corpses!

I guess they all were attracted by the sour smell, climbed in, got drunk, fell in, drowned. I have not tried this again since, and I don’t know that it actually takes a week and a half (it just took me that long to realize what had happened). In my case, the empty sake bottle did not smell up the room or anything…

Try it and let me know if it works.

5

My friend suffered from the same problem and someone in some message board (not here though) suggested using
[ul]

[li]3 dl water[/li][li]0.5 dl vinegar[/li][li]0.5 dl sugar[/li][li]few drops of dishsoap[/li]
[/ul]

The mixture is left on a bowl or a jar for couple of days and that should rid you of the the problem.