Bugs are not something you want in your house—period. And fruit flies are especially unwanted houseguests. Sure, you can try to shoo them away, but to get rid of fruit flies for good, you’ll need a smart, long-term solution.
If you have been seeing small flies or gnats in your kitchen, they’re probably fruit flies. Fruit flies can be a problem year round, but are especially common during late summer/fall because they are attracted to ripened or fermenting fruits and vegetables.
Tomatoes, melons, squash, grapes and other perishable items brought in from the garden are often the cause of an infestation developing indoors. Fruit flies are also attracted to rotting bananas, potatoes, onions and other unrefrigerated produce purchased at the grocery store.
To cut off fruit flies from their food source and prevent them from entering your home, take these preventive measures to get rid of fruit flies.
- Throw out overripe produce
- Store fruits and veggies in the fridge
- Wash produce as soon as you get home to remove any potential eggs or larvae
- Take out the garbage regularly
How to get rid of fruit flies using a DIY fruit fly trap:
- Make a trap with apple cider vinegar and plastic wrap.
For this DIY fruit fly trap, pour a little apple cider vinegar into a glass, or just remove the cap from a bottle. (It doesn’t have to be full — nearly empty will also work.) Cover the opening with plastic wrap and secure with a rubber band. Then, poke a few small holes for the fruit flies to enter. They can’t resist the scent of vinegar, and they won’t be able to exit once they’re inside.
For an even better chance at success, make several of these traps and place them around your kitchen.
- Trap flies with a paper cone, vinegar, and old fruit.
Place a little vinegar and a chunk of very ripe fruit in a jar. Then, roll some paper into a cone and stick it into the jar, placing the narrow opening down. (You can recycle or compost the homemade funnel afterwards.) The smell of rotting produce will help entice the fruit flies into the mixture, but the cone part of this fruit fly trap makes it difficult for them to get out.
- Drown flies by leaving out a bowl of vinegar and dish soap.
If you find your fruit flies impervious your plastic wrap or paper cone traps, try adding three drops of dish soap to a bowl of vinegar, and leave it uncovered. The soap cuts the surface tension of the vinegar so the flies will sink and drown.
- Put out an almost-empty bottle of old wine or beer.
Like vinegar, fruit flies love the smell of wine. Try leaving out an open bottle with a little leftover liquid — the skinny neck will keep the flies trapped. The Old Farmer’s Almanac also recommends using stale beer to attract fruit flies to a DIY trap. Add a couple of drops of dish soap to either for surer success.
- Use chemical attractants
Pestman fruit fly attractant is a mixture of food grade ingredients. The smell it emits is very attractive to fruit flies, luring them in for a short time and stopping them from causing damage to fruit and vegetables. Secondly, it is a green, non-polluting product.
It is non-toxic to humans, animals and crops and is very friendly to the environment. It has a long shelf life of 3 to 6 months and is effective against a wide range of fruit flies, such as the oriental fruit fly, melon fly and Mediterranean fruit fly, without affecting beneficial insects, making it extremely cost effective. If you need to treat both fruit flies and other flying insects, we recommend using our yellow boards in combination.
To use, pour 100-200 ml of Bismarck fruit fly attractant into a discarded plastic bottle and cut a 5*20 mm square hole in the side of the bottle, which has been experimentally proven to be more conducive to trapping fruit flies. Hang the bottle from a branch or tree trunk with a hook. In orchards, bottles should be hung 1-2 metres above the ground; in vegetable patches, bottles should be hung 1-1.5 metres above the ground; in other crop growing areas, bottles should be hung flush with the crop, with one bottle placed every 25-30 metres.
This product may settle, shake the bottle before use. The opening of the plastic bottle should be opened 5 cm above the liquid level. Hang the bottles in a well-ventilated area and out of direct sunlight. When there are too many fruit flies in the bottle or the attractant has evaporated, pour the attractant back in. Hang the bottles 1-2 weeks after the fruit and vegetables become susceptible to fruit fly attack and keep them up until the end of the harvest. Avoid contact with children.
