I’m plagued with fruit flies in my home office, of all places. I have no fruit here. The only place I can think of that could possibly be harboring fruit flies is my trash can, which I’ve emptied and washed several times, yet these annoying little flies persist. They crawl over my computer monitor and dive bomb my face.
WTF?
Where are they coming from and how can I get rid of them??
House plants? Every infestation I’ve known of was centered in a house plant.
Mine were breeding in a beer bottle at the back of my computer desk. They apparently love yeast.
I don’t think it’s plants, since I’ve only had the plants a week and the infestation has been going on for ages. I also don’t have any food and/or dirty dishes in my office, so I have no clue where they’re coming from. Grrrr.
I read in another thread (I know, I should have searched first, shame on me) that a glass of fruit juice with a few drops of dish detergent in it will attract and kill them, but it doesn’t seem to be working so far. All I had was leftover canned grapefruit juice, so I’m trying that, but the fruit flies are ignoring it in favor of trying to fly up my nose.
Hate.
They’re fungus gnats. Trust me. I worked Rutgers’ Master Gardener hotline and I’m here to tell you that everyone in the world has fungus gnats running around the office/house, and everyone believes they’re fruit flies, and no one believes they’re coming from potted plants/the drains/the garbage can.
If you have a potted plant in the vicinity, that’s probably the origin. What you need is a big ol’ bottle of Knock-Out Gnats from www.gardens-alive.com. It’s expensive but it works.
Fungus gnats. Yup.
Slight hijack, but I had one of those buggers fly into my ear canal. It sounded like a blackhawk helicopter inside my head. Just as I was about to scream in frustration and head out to the emergency room, it found its way out again. Of course, I was plagued for weeks with nightmares about the eggs it probably laid in my ear; waiting for them to hatch and drive me absolutely insane! (never happened).
Anyway, get rid of the buggers ASAP no matter the cost. Trust me, you don’t want one in your ear!
You see, the mummy fruit fly and the daddy fruit fly love each other, and they lie together in a very special way, and eventually the mummy fruit fly lays eggs from her tummy, and the li’l baby fruit flies come out of the eggs and fly around until they’re big fruit flies.
Now you run along, dear, and play…
I had an infestation of some kind of fruit-fly like insect. I scoured the kitchen looking for places the flies may be breeding, thouroughly cleaned everything, took out all the trash, etc.
The next day they were still there. I finally found the culprit. An old bag of partially liquifying potatoes ON THE COUNTER IN FULL VIEW. Somehow I’d missed that during my initial purge. :rolleyes:
What about sticky pest strips to at least catch them and prevent them from breeding further?
The traps will take care of what’s zipping around your house, but they won’t eliminate the problem.
Fungus gnat larvae do a lot of damage to roots of houseplants. And they’ll multiply happily until you zap them with Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, the active ingredient in the product I recommended.
I had this exact same problem a while ago and even posted a picture of the things here since I didn’t know what they were. Someone recommended that I get some cider vinegar, mix in some liquid detergent, put it in a jar and shake it up to make suds, then add a paper funnel to the top with about a 2cm opening at the bottom. The flies will be attracted to the vinegar (which they think is rotting fruit) and will fly in and get stuck on the soap bubbles. It worked perfectly, there were dozens of dead flies in the jar in a few days. The infestation ended. I discovered later that the initial attractant had been some rotting onions and potatoes in the back of my food closet.