That moment when you come home from a long week of vacation only to be accosted in your own home by a swarm of well organized ruthless fruit flies.
🙁
Yeah ok, so maybe it wasn’t an actual swarm, but who knows how organized or ruthless they really are? What I can tell you is that there were so many fruit flies that by the end of the week my husband and I were pretending to be Gimli and Legolas seeing who could knock off the most fruit flies. Yep, that’s bad.
So today I want to share a simple solution to a pesky problem. It might not be pretty or decorative, but it works, and is necessary!
There were so many fruit flies that by the end of the week my husband and I were pretending to be Gimli and Legolas seeing who could knock off the most fruit flies. Yep, that’s bad.
Turns out that all that pre-vacation cleaning was for naught since someone dropped a piece of fruit in the kitchen floor vent and didn’t bother cleaning it out. Ew. I realized it when I stepped near the vent and 20 flies fled.
In the past I have tried several fruit fly traps:
- Apple cider vinegar with a drop of dish soap (to cause a disturbance in the force…I know, I’m totally geeking out today). Eh, it caught some, but I hated the smell that filled the kitchen, and it didn’t catch as many as I’d like.
- Sticky cellophane as a lid over the apple cider vinegar. Nope, too few were caught.
- Purchased (for a lot of money I might add) a cute little apple shaped fruit fly trap Which worked, but seriously…so expensive! Especially when you need one for every room of the house.
- Fruit fly cone trap. So far, THIS ONE WINS!! I made one for every room in the house, and caught about 32 fruit flies (it was hard to count them) in the kitchen alone. The one in my bedroom had about 8…well, they had a week to migrate.
A Couple Tips For Making The Most Effective Fly Trap:
Make a cone with scrap paper. Make it to fit the size of the recycled jar you are using. The narrow part of the cone should descend about halfway down into the jar. Place a little piece of tape to hold it in position.
Place very ripe sweet fragrant fruit such as a ripe banana, or basically fruit you’ve noticed fruit flies attract to the fastest and in the largest quantity. Then tape the cone to the jar…but be sure there are no bubbles in the tape. The fruit flies often gather at the top in an attempt to escape and get out of the paper and try to crawl through the tape out. Masking tape is the easiest to ensure no bubbles.
Leave these bad boys out overnight…or the next 3 days, whatever…soon your jar will look like the latest lounge bar for fruit flies.
When you’re ready to dispose of the fruit flies, just crumple the paper top down and throw away the entire jar. If you want to reuse the jar, you’ll have to release those fruit flies into the wild outdoors then replace the fruit, and create a new paper cone.
It absolutely works! And I love that it costs nothing!
What methods have you found to eliminate those pesky little flies? And if anyone has mouse-be-gone-and-stay-gone methods…I could use some tips! Ewww.
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I am going to try this because OMG I could just bomb my whole house. What are you using to keep the flies from flying back out the top of the cone.
Lol! I know that feeling! 😀 This method tricks the fruit flies, they aren’t smart enough to find the center of the cone to fly out of again… they just fly to the top of the jar.
Oooooooh. Yes. I’m currently waging war against fruit flies in my kitchen and nothing I try works. Doing this the minute I get home. Thank you!
wonsering how you made your apple cider vinegar trap that it did not work well. Mine always work great. And of course essentially free since I have the supplies on hand. Pour a inch or more apple cider vinegar into a glass. Cover tightly with plastic cling wrap. Poke one or two small holes in the cling wrap. (A toothpick will work). When you get a bunch in, you can shake the glass to make a fresh surface, and since they are dead when it is time to refresh, you can pour out the vinegar, pitch the plastic and start over.
Aha! Yours is a much better take on the apple cider vinegar trap! You cover with cling wrap so they have to choose to go in! The method I tried (found online) was to drip a couple drops of dish soap in an open glass of apple cider vinegar, the fruit flies were suppose to try to land on it and slip under and drown (because the dish soap cuts the surface tension of the vinegar). But instead they would land on the outside of the glass around the lip and many wouldn’t ever actually land on the vinegar… it stunk up my kitchen (because it is open) and I caught a few, but it caught maybe 7 or 8, whereas the cone in glass method caught over 30 in a single night.
I will definitely give your variation on the vinegar trap a try! Thanks for sharing!
Definitely going to remember this one! One of the worst things about coming home from a vacation!