Hi Bart, my favorite fruit fly trap is built like this. Take a quart jar and put in an inch or two of white vinegar. Add a pinch of sugar to start the fermentation to attract them, and a few drops of Dawn or other dish soap to kill them. In the top of the jar put a sheet of letter-size paper rolled into a cone that's wide at the top for easy access and narrow at the bottom so they can't get back out. However, the cone should be long enough that they try to escape by getting to the top of the jar instead of finding their way out the hole. I cut off the excess around the top of the cone to make it even easier for them to get in. When it's full, you can take the whole thing outside, pull out the cone to let out the live ones, dump out the vinegar & dead bodies, and start over.

Don't forget to check for places they might be breeding like a drain or other wet spot. Keeping the garbage lidded will help too.

Melissa

Thanks, Melva, for the tip. I just sent for a set of two traps but haven't opened them yet. They are supposed to last a month each. Fruit flies haven't appeared in my kitchen yet, so the traps are still in their package. They were kind of expensive, but they are small and can hide right in a fruit bowl. Your trap however, is free and will probably work just as good. I am going to try it....I just Hate those little critters!!

Thanks Melissa!

the homemade traps with vinegar will rid your house of the little critters...I had the worlds worst infestation and I made three jar traps and almost overnight the place was fee of them...

The fruit flies outside can be a big problem too, if you have falling ripened fruit.

I have a good sized wooden box - about 3 x 5 feet, with a cover and cushion on top. It serves as a resting place in the garden as well. All of the fallen ripe fruit are put in along with raked leaves, etc., and with a shovel of dirt. It acts like a composter and keeps the fruit flies from breeding.

Also - on my back porch, I have 2 stacked worm bins, that "catch" all of the fruit and veggie scraps. On top of the scraps I layer shredded newspaper and other junk mail items, which also helps feed and keep the worms cool -but keeps the flies from breeding as well.

Bejay

Wow, Melissa, thanks for the tip! I have made a similar contraption to battle yellowjackets on the verandah, baited with juice or pop, but never thought of it for fruit flies.

Bart, I have had success reducing the number of infestations greatly by rinsing all fruit the SECOND it gets into the house, INCLUDING bananas, oranges, etc. where you don't eat the peel so otherwise might not bother to wash.

But when they do sneak in, I had no better idea than the sticky strips, or the expensive but effective commercial traps e.g. from Lee Valley. I'll definitely try the vinegar next time!

Zabby

Are these tiny flies really the fruit fly? Fruit flies have fat, short, black bodies and short wings. A similar, but much smaller fly is the fungus gnat that can infest a garden and also any indoor plants throughout the summer. These are trapped on horizontal yellow sticky sheets that I set down on the edges of my indoor plants. For the garden, I have used Gnatrol, and also beneficial nematodes. Usually fruit flies will linger around garbage indoors, or around well ripened fruits.

Zabby, you're brave to free a jar full of angry yellow jackets! Or do you just lid them up & let them drink your bait for the short rest of their lives?

I found out that fruit flies come in from outside, not just from fruit they already lived on. Sometimes I see one outside drifting around like a mosquito. By far my grossest infestation was in a peach pie I left on the table for two days. I almost didn't keep the pie pan, it was so gross. Fruit fly maggots crawling through my beautiful thick filling.

Melissa

Melissa,

I feel for you! Our one and only fruit fly infestation this year has been around the remains of a peach pie that my mom had brought us. Ick!

The yellow jackets generally drown in my trap. Then I dump 'em in the compost.

The engineering is slightly different from your fruit-fly trap but the principle of making it easy to get in but hard to get out is the same. We took a regular canning-jar flat lid and cut an "X" shape in the middle, then bent down the four resulting triangles of metal. Put a few inches of sweet liquid (a mix of juice and pop really seems to bring 'em in), then screw the lid on with a regular band. Wasps & things crawl down easily but have trouble getting back out because of the pointy bits and their slippery undersides. There's not much room to fly around an nowhere to land, so they soon hit the liquid and drown.

We get 20 or more of these guys in each of two such traps daily in the bad season for them (mid-August).

Zabby

What is it with Peach Pies? Last summer I had the remains of a Peach Pie inside the glass-domed cake plate. The cake dish was coated with fruit flies --- but not one got inside, a good thing to know.

I generally have a problem around tomato canning time and then just wrap all garbage in plastic before taking it out and adding it to compost heap (which is far enough from the house so they don't wander inside).

So we left for a week's vacation, came back home and realized that we'd forgotten to dump the compost bucket under the sink. Yuck!!! My first thought for how to get rid of them was to check the harvest forum, and sure enough, I found this easy solution, with everything in my kitchen already. So I made one.

My DH walked into the kitchen, and said, "you Googled that, didn't you?" And I said no, the Harvest Forum is my source for all things resourceful!!

So a day and a half later, my little drosophilla friends have succumbed, and I say thank you! My DH has confiscated one of the traps for the wasps by the back door...

BTW, I used some old apple cider vinegar I had in the back of the cupboard for 2 of the traps and they really seemed to go for it!

I keep peach pie, also apple, blueberry, etc, in the microwave. Take them out briefly, of course, when micro is operating, which isn't very often. I love those expensive little traps, too. Two of them last me a season. Before them I battled with fruit flies seemed like all the way to Thanksgiving. Hate those little devils!!!

I have antique versions of the fruit fly trap hanging in my pastry display at the shop cos I have one of those old wooden display cases and they are not sealed. I also have one in the kitchen. I don't breed them but boy do they come in when the cases of fresh fruits and veggies come in from market. I grow what I can but not the fruits. Tomatoes are always my worst fly season too, especially when I don't have enough in my garden and have to buy some. With 132 plants this year, I should be okay. You can get some nice old or old looking glass traps that you can hang from ebay, just search fly traps. I use the vinegar with sugar too, some yeast in water is a sure fire attractant too.

Marie

I think I can blame the cherries for my fruit fly infestation. I plucked some ripe cherries and carried them inside in a plastic bag. I cut one open and taste-tested it. Yuk! Sour! So I decided that the birds could continue to eat them. Trouble is, I forgot about the bag until all these nasty little flies starting turning up. I discovered the bag about three days later (don't ask), and tied the top in a knot and put it on my garbage to go out. Somehow the little, um, larvae got out, so I had to bag everything up triple before putting it out.

Eww! I have the creepy-crawlies just thinking about it!

I tried the yellow sticky mats. I hung one on a hook to one side of my sink. A couple days later I came home from work, and I notice my Ragdoll sitting by the back door looking pitiful and not wanting to move. When I tried to examine him he walked away, and he had the yellow sticky mat glued to his butt! He'd also somehow gotten a plastic grocery bag glued there, too. And he'd been walking around all day like that. No wonder he felt pitiful. I bet all the other cats were laughing at him.

Yeah those yellow sticky traps are really sticky!! Usually they work best if they lay flat horizontally. Obviously any animal would soon pick them up and walk everywhere with them. To get rid of the sticky goo, use vegetable oil first, to soften and loosen the goo, then soap and water to get rid of that oily mess.

I suggestion form my Grandpa- God rest his soul- he passed away late in June, but he told my mom about this suggestion a few weeks before he passed away.

Take a banana peel and stick it in a ziplock bag. Leave the bag open in the area where you have the flies. Once the bag is crawling with the little bugs, zip it shut and toss. Repeat as necessary. My mom tried it for fruit flies in her car- don't ask how they got there. It worked wonderfully!

Hope you get some help from one of the suggestions.

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