Here’s an easy, chemical free way to get rid of them.
Step 1: Remove their food sources. In my case, this means “clean the kitchen.” ugh. That’s definitely the worst part of this whole process.
Step 2: Put something sweet in a cup. Fruit flies like fruit (duh) but wine and spaghetti sauce also works.
Step 3: Saran wrap the top. Seal it tightly with a rubber band.
Step 4: POKE SOME HOLES. Little ones. With a toothpick or fork. The fruit flies will be able to get in, but not out.
Within 10 minutes, I’d caught my first victim. The next morning, the cups were full of fruit flies. I still have a few flying around the kitchen, so I sent those cups out with the trash and made a couple new ones.
If you have company coming over, put the cup in a pretty container way up high on top of your cabinets, and they’ll never know that you have a fruit-fly-death-trap in your kitchen.
If you’re kind of mean, like I am, you can use microwavable cups and kill the nasty bugs after you catch them. But they will get cooked to the side of your cup, possibly ruining it, so don’t say I didn’t warn you!
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Tutorials and Tips Tuesday at Stories of AtoZ
Thankfully, we don't have fruit flies. But, we do have cluster flies. OH THE CLUSTER FLIES!
ReplyDeleteUgh.
When we first bought the house in the Fall, it was vacant and there were HUNDREDS of cluster flies. They were beginning to make an appearance this spring (on the side of the house?!) but we sprayed permethrin (bad environmentalists!) and it seems to have kept them dead.
Now the only creatures we have in the house are bats and mice. And beetles. Sigh. I'd rather fruit flies.
Genius! We don't have a big problem with those here but I will be putting this in my arsenal for when we do.
ReplyDeleteI actually have a glass of wine covered with saran wrap on my counter at this very moment. I need to clean my kitchen too! But it's 95 degrees in here! UGH!
ReplyDeleteGood to know! I'm definitely keeping this in mind for the next time we get a swarm of those little buggers...
ReplyDelete~Chelsea
Thank you for this post! I am going to go make one right now :)
ReplyDeleteUgh, fruit flies. We had a huge problem with fruit flies last year but thankfully not at all this year. (Although we've fought drain flies/gnats since we've moved in.) I tried this type, but I had a lot more luck with the trap that's a mason jar with a big chunk of banana, a little water and a paper cone taped into the mouth of the jar. I'd never heard of the microwaving thing, though, that made me laugh.
ReplyDeleteAt the school where I taught last year, we were all keeping earthworms to eat snack scraps. Well, someone didn't close their bin well over Christmas vacation and when we came back...we had a new students...lots and lots of fruit flies. Someone read that you could use vinegar and the whole setup as you have explained. This week, I had some flies enjoying a tomato and I used this trick. I don't want to cook them, they are annoying but I don't feel any anger toward them. In fact, I may dump them into my compost, but they are mostly dead since they drown in the vinegar. Not too bright, those flies.
ReplyDelete