What can be done to get rid of fruit flies in your home? Read on for details about fruit flies, their characteristics, and finally, the best ways to evict them when they move in.
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What Fruit Flies Look Like
It’s got wings, it flies around, it infiltrates your home and wants to steal your food.
This description can be true of pretty much ALL flies; how do you know you’re dealing specifically with a fruit fly?
Small Bodies, Big Nuisance
Fruit flies are some of the tiniest well-known flies that people can readily identify. They are easy to spot because of their compact bodies, as well as their method of flight.
Instead of flitting around and buzzing like most common houseflies, fruit flies usually engage in a slow, humming hover.
Watch this video on how fruit flies attack your produce in time lapse:
The Fine Print
Fruit flies are so small, that you’d probably need some equipment to see the minute characteristics they hold. Their amber body and wing color is visible to most people, but it takes a sharpened sense of eyesight to see a fruit fly’s menacingly bright red eyes.
Where Do They Hang Out, And When?
Usually, fruit flies will congregate around anything giving off a sweet aroma.
Aptly named, it’s not uncommon to see a hoard of fruit flies flitter away from a bowl of fresh fruit ripening on a kitchen counter.
It’s also pretty common to spot fruit flies around open soda can and beer bottles, as these beverages are high in sugar content and, therefore, very attractive to fruit flies.
These insects thrive in hot temperatures, so late autumn, winter, and spring are not the time that you’ll need to worry about these guys.
It’s common to see them infest your home in summertime and in early autumn, before the temperatures have fallen.
…in other words, the season when you’ll actually want to keep your windows open for fresh air.
Will Fruit Flies Hurt You?
A Bite From a Fruit Fly
Fortunately, these little guys don’t bite humans. They actually don’t even have teeth! This is why they love super-ripe or even rotten food: their method of feeding is to wait until a sugar substance has fermented a bit, then suck the juice with a sort of biological straw attached to their mouths for nutrition. If you are getting bit, you could have gnats, and it might be time to start looking for effective gnat traps.
What About Disease?
This is the primary reason you don’t want fruit flies anywhere near your kitchen, or your food: they like rotting food the most of all. The fruit flies swarming all around your bowl of apples may have just been sitting on a pile of rotting watermelons down the street, for all you know. Disease and bacteria can be carried and spread by fruit flies with ease, so it’s important to eliminate them from your home at the very first sign of them.
What About Accidental Ingestion?
While no one plans to go around eating fruit flies, sometimes accidents happen. One might even accidentally fly into your mouth without you realizing it! If you accidentally swallow a fruit fly, you should be fine.
But fruit flies lay microscopic eggs along the surface of your fruits. If you’re not properly washing your produce, you could be putting yourself at risk for far more accidental ingestion than you may realize.
It won’t actually hurt you, however, it’s always advisable to wash your fruit thoroughly to limit the spread of bacteria.
Won’t Fruit Flies Just Go Away?
If it’s late August and you’re seeing your first batch of fruit flies for the year, you may be tempted to just live and let live until winter’s chill kills them all off. Why should you invest in traps if they’ll die soon anyway?
Fruit Fly Traps Give Quick Results
Sure, the fruit flies will die in a matter of months anyway, but that doesn’t mean you need to live with them in your home, contaminating your fresh produce.
Think of it this way: if you discovered roaches in your home, but you knew that they would die off in a matter of weeks, would you just ignore them for the time being?
Probably not. Fruit flies are small and seemingly harmless, but don’t let their appearance fool you.
With a fruit fly trap, you can enjoy the warmth of summer without the irritation of these bacteria-ridden pests.
They’re Simply Disgusting
There are no two ways around it: fruit flies are gross. And when you find out that they could be poisoning your fruits with their eggs and larvae, they seem even more repulsive.
Do yourself (and your household) a favor, and take a look at some fly traps specially designed to target and trap fruit flies.
Did You Know
Fruit flies lay microscopic eggs along the surface of your fruits. Make sure you rinse!
Can I Make My Own Fruit Fly Trap?
For all the DIY enthusiasts out there, rest easy in knowing that there are ways to concoct your own fruit fly trap to rid your home of these guys. Here are a few of our top-recommended fruit fly trap DIY methods.
To trap fruit flies seamlessly, you can place a mixture of apple cider vinegar with a few drops of dish soap in a few small bowls scattered throughout the home, or wherever your fruit flies live.
- The fruit flies will be lured in by the scent of the apple cider vinegar
- After they’ve flown into the mixture, the dish soap will act as a glue that traps them
- Dispose of the mixture once a day, and repeat the process until all fruit flies are gone
It turns out that red wine is a perfect attractant for fruit flies, as the sugar content is high and the original grape aroma beckons them near. As with the vinegar and dish soap trap, simply leave a bit of red wine out in a jar, and watch fruit flies drown in the wine.
Note: it may be tempting to just leave a bit of wine in the bottom of a bottle, but we recommend to pour it into a separate container with a wide mouth, like a jar or a drinking glass. This way, the fruit flies have an easier access to the wine and a higher chance of falling into the liquid.
For this simple hack, all you’ll need are a few peeled bananas, sliced or mashed to fit into a small jar.
You can poke holes in the metal lid of the jar, or simply make some holes in plastic wrap and coat the top of the jar with it. Fruit flies will follow their scent receptor into the jar to the sweet smell of the bananas, but they’ll be unable to find their way out.
5 Best Fruit Fly Traps In 2023
In the below section we break down each of our product recommendations in a little more detail.
- BEAPCO 6-Pack Drop-Ins Fruit Fly Traps
- TERRO Fruit Fly Trap T2502
- RESCUE! FFTR2 Non-Toxic Reusable Fly Trap
- Natural Catch Fruit Fly Traps
- Aunt Fannie’s FlyPunch! Fruit Fly Trap
BEAPCO Drop-Ins Fruit Fly Traps (6-Pack)
These little traps work similarly to the banana jar hack as mentioned above: the user fills a one-way-entry cup with a lure solution, and the fruit flies fall victim to the scent.
Once trapped inside, they eventually die in a matter of days.
TERRO Fruit Fly Trap T2502
This trap also takes advantage of the attractant solution model with a conical lid that lures in the fruit flies, but gives them only a small hole through which to escape.
These traps are well-made and sturdy, meaning they can go the distance throughout an entire season of fruit fly trapping.
RESCUE! FFTR2 Non-Toxic Reusable Fly Trap
RESCUE! is a name-brand when it comes to pest trapping and removal.
It stands to reason that this product will outlast the competition; although its design is somewhat average and its reviews across the web fall short.
Natural Catch Fruit Fly Traps
This fly trap is sold as a plastic apparatus in the shape of a triangle with four small craters lodged inside.
Each crater has an attractant solution inside, and there’s a plastic covering over each dip, which the consumer must perforate upon unboxing.
Aunt Fannie’s FlyPunch! Fruit Fly Trap
This product is a small bottle of solution which looks similar to a spice jar in size.
There’s a plastic lid on top which can trap fruit flies inside when they smell the solution, which is made of a commercial-grade vinegar blend with notes of fermented fruit formulated especially by the manufacturer.
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