Getting Rid of Fruit Flies
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Fruit fly season is that time of year where no glass of juice, wine, or beer is safe from those little red-eyed flies looking for fermented liquid to raise their young in. These tiny flies can be maddening, especially when clouds of them invade your home.

What can you do to get rid of them? Here’s an easy list of ways to eliminate these naughty flies:

• Unless your compost container has a very tight seal, put it outside, especially overnight. Be careful not to attract bears.

• If you put your fruit and vegetable scraps in the garbage, treat it like a compost container and put it outside, too. Or keep it tightly sealed.

• Keep your fruits and vegetables in the fridge.

• Rinse out all of your empty beer and wine bottles. Any little bit of residue provides a breeding ground for fruit flies.

• Check your drains. All that fruit flies need to breed is a bit of sludgy or fermented liquid. They may be doing so in the gunk in your sink drainpipe.

• Trap your flies. There are a number of trapping methods including flypaper if you don’t mind the look, such as Fruit Fly Traps from Amazon.com or Lee Valley Tools (Canadian source); a small bowl of water, vinegar, and dish soap placed in problem areas; and the best-looking, a Wasp Catcher Jar turned into a Fruit Fly Catching Jar. These pretty-coloured traps come in small and large sizes and are available from most garden centres, as well as from Amazon.com.

The fruit fly catcher jars are designed with an opening in the bottom centre, which is surrounded by a trough that holds liquid. The top has a narrow neck that is corked to help make filling and cleaning the jar easier. The jars work similar to how minnow traps do. The flies go in after the bait, but are not smart enough to get out.

How to use fruit fly jars: Fill the trough with a small amount of water mixed with orange juice, a tiny squirt of dish soap to break the liquid’s surface tension, wine, beer, or apple cider vinegar, and small bits of fermenting fruit. Hang in the kitchen near your problem site.

Empty the jar now and then to keep it clean. It’s best to do this outside so you don’t release any living flies back into the house. To kill captured flies, dunk the jar in a bucket of water, easing the cork out slowly to let out air while keeping the fruit flies in. Leave jar under water until all flies are dead.

I’ve found that trapping works best when you do remove all other potential food sources. If the flies gain access to compost, garbage, or fermenting liquids, populations will explode no matter how many traps you set up.

In the end, suffering is not required. Just follow the fruit fly removal methods, and soon you’ll be able to drink out of a glass again without first inspecting it for fly bodies.
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Photo Credit: Ehsan Namavar

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