I had a friend over in July for a sewing get-together. We had snacks of chevre and Triscuits as well as some apples and caramel. She had brought, as her contribution to the goodies, a couple of pears. We ate one, and I kept the other in the fruit bowl to use up later.
Well, it wasn't two days later my house became infested with fruit flies! There were dozens of them flying by the kitchen sink, in the bathroom, and attacking my other fruit. I threw the pear away and proceeded to kill every one of the little buggers that I could.
Fruit flies are so tiny that the very act of trying to swat them blows them out of reach of your weapon of choice. I'm pretty accurate at clapping them to death, and I can even manage a good one-handed catch-n-squash every now and then. But it is now October, and I am STILL battling an army of them!
My dogs think that I'm trying to correct them for naughty things as I clap away, yelling and cussing. They are very concerned and nervous. As I'm typing this in the living room, I have had at least three of them fly right up to my face. This is ridiculous!
Help! I promise to never keep gift fruit again, but what can I do to get rid of these pesky little bastards?
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11 comments:
I'm having the same problem! Enough already. I am forever killing them.
Set out a little bowl of sweet vinegar, like red wine vinegar, and see if it will draw them to their doom?
No wonder they charge to your face, you are pretty from what I see in the profile, no offense.
I have good luck using an old soda bottle (plastic is fine, it just needs to have a narrow neck). Fill it with about an inch of Apple Cider vinegar, and a drop of dishsoap, and if you have any, a chunk of fruit that is just big enough to barely stick out of the vinegar.
This really does work.
Have you tried fly paper? I don't even know if you can get it anymore but if you can, it's worth a try.
I agree with old roses, try flypaper.
Thanks everyone for all the great solutions!!
Jenn and Nancy, my husband hates the smell of vinegar, so that wouldn't work too well in my house. But that is a very good idea if I get real desperate.
Jac, how could I be offended by the nice things that you say about me?
Farmer John, welcome to my blog, fellow Wisconsinite! Ah, Wisconsin!
OldRoses, I hate the way flypaper looks. But someone did tell me an easy way to make homemade flypaper. Spread honey very thinly on some strips of paper and hang them. I was about to try that- maybe put it up in places that wouldn't be so noticeable.
I'll tell you what I did. I took a gallon jar, threw some banana slices in the bottom and set it on my kitchen counter lid-less. When there were lots of flies in the jar, I popped a lid on, brought the jar outside away from the house, and I shook them out. Then I re-set the jar and did it all over again. It took less than two days to get rid of nearly all the flies! Yay!
I'm still up for more solutions. Especially any that involve getting rid of meal-moths!! I hate them! I hate them!! I hate them!!!!
This reminds me of a science project in high school when we bred fruit flies. Some of the boys thought it was pretty funny to release them, this of course resulted in an infestation and the wrath of our teacher who had no sense of humour. The room was shut down and sprayed with some kind of chemical for 2 days. We never had to breed them again LOL. My choice of weapon is Raid and the dog and I leave the house for the day.
you don't smell the vinegar much... the narrow neck keeps the smell down.
Depends on how sensitive your husband's nose is.
Good luck!
We had an infestation of bugs that look just like fruit flies but they were all over the house. They weren't particularly attracted to the things that usually attract fruit flies, like the bananas we always have out on the counter.
After weeks of annoyance we started googling for information and realized that our pesky little bugs were breeding in the soil of our houseplants and weren't fruit flies. We got rid of every single plant and that solved the problem immediately. I suspect they came indoors with one of the plants I was attempting to overwinter in the house.
CrazyGramma, that sounded like fun. We did fruit flies and meal worms, but never got an infestation.
Nancy, I will try that next time. I was using a beer bottle. They really seem to like beer!
Sabine, I wonder what they were. That sounds awful. I don't keep house plants because I kill them. I need Mother Nature's help with my gardening.
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