Fruit flies are an understandably extremely irritating issue for every single homeowner. What's worse? That you don't know where the fruit flies came from and they just showed up one night or the fact that once these pests invade the sanctity of your home, you won't get back your peace and quiet?
Maybe there were some stowaway fruit fly eggs on a newly purchased bunch of bananas or maybe you let the fruit salad sit on the counter for a bit too long while cleaning around the house thinking, you'll eat it later. Well regardless, they got into your house and you want them out, fast.
How To Make Fruit Fly Trap:
Even if fruit flies aren't biters they spread diseases which is more than bad for you. Most flying insects can carry harmful pathogens and bacteria on their bodies and easily deliver these harmful microorganisms to the foods stored in your pantry or the counter.
Even if you are diligent and follow all safe food storage measures, the flies can still land and contaminate surfaces that are commonly touched by humans such as towels, toothbrushes, etc. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to craft a homemade trap for fruit flies.
There are plenty of materials lying around in your home to make homemade fruit fly traps 'do-it-yourself' also known as DIY. Some materials that you will need from your pantry to make a fruit fly homemade trap are sugar, water, paper or plastic wrap, cups, bowls or mason jars, rubber bands, tape, apple cider vinegar, and dish soap.
There are three important components to a successful DIY fruit fly catcher. First is the attractant with which the flies are allured, second is the container for the attractant, and lastly, the stopper which allows movement in only one direction.
Now the next step in answering your question on how to catch fruit flies in homemade fruit fly traps is to select a suitable container. Ideally, the container should be small and unobtrusive but also big enough to contain enough mixture, so the fruit flies won’t be able to climb on each other to fly out successfully.
Use a mason jar or if you don’t have a spare mason jar in your home, you can substitute with a small bowl or a plastic cup which also works superbly. Alternatively, why not use them all to make multiple traps and maximize your chances of trapping the fruit flies in DIY traps?
Now that you have decided upon a vessel for your fly trap, it’s time to get pouring. Pour half an inch of apple cider vinegar which should be just enough to fill the vessel after adding water. This ensures that there is sufficient liquid to drown the fruit flies in homemade traps without wasting too much vinegar.
Why apple cider vinegar? The strong smell of the vinegars is irresistible to fruit flies as they are heavily attracted to overripe and fermented fruits which is their actual food source and is closely mimicked by the cider vinegar making it the perfect lure.
Sugar is one of the densest sources of energy in nature which makes it appealing to all insects and fruit flies are no exception. Most insects have an acute sense of smell that is hyper-tuned for food sources with some of them being able to detect sugar from a few miles away.
Since no one would want to have a container filled with a bunch of dead insects lying around, I’m sure you would like for this entire ordeal to be over with as soon as possible, thus with the addition of large heaps of sugar all the fruit flies in your vicinity should be attracted and hence neutralized in a few days.
After adding sugar, you need to add water to the mix. This will increase the volume of liquid to hold a greater number of helpless fruit flies meaning you need to refill the trap less often, it also diffuses the vinegar and sugar compounds in the container closer to the mixture surface.
This is important because both vinegar and sugar are denser and could end up settling at the bottom due to sedimentation. Furthermore, concentrated vinegar has a lower boiling point so diluting makes it evaporate less quickly which should make the trap last longer.
Lastly, add a few drops of dish soap to our attractant mixture and this entire concoction will be complete. While the previous additions either had something to do with attracting or longevity, the purpose of dish soap is neither.
Water has the strongest surface tension among the naturally occurring liquids due to its strong hydrogen bond, this means many insects including fruit flies can simply land and walk on water. Dish soap serves to weaken the hydrogen bonds and ensure the flies sink the moment they land.
Now with all ingredients in place, stir the mixture in our DIY fruit fly trap container gently to mix everything uniformly. Ensure that the sugar is completely dissolved, and the dish soap thoroughly mixed instead of sinking to the bottom.
Improperly mixed ingredients mean our attractant won’t be as effective as they could have been. Even at half effectiveness, they could still kill the fruit flies but they wouldn't last as long. We would rather not have you waste your time and materials if we can help it.
Making a trap opening is crucial for improving the effectiveness of the trap. Some fruit flies may be attracted by the smell of the vinegar solution but it wouldn't be much of a fruit fly catcher DIY trap if the flies couldn't even get in.
Merely having a trap opening isn't sufficient as you also need to ensure that your trap can be entered but not exited to have a 100% success rate. Simply make a funnel out of the paper and place its end just half an inch above the vinegar surface.
You don’t want all your hard work to be invalidated by a gust of wind or a bunch of flies bumping constantly which could shift the material and create a new opening that the flies could easily escape from.
If you use plastic wrap, then it can be secured easily by simply using a rubber band and securing it tightly around the neck of the container. For paper funnels, consider using pieces of scotch tape or liquid paper glue to secure the funnel.
Now that your fruit fly traps are homemade and ready to catch the flies, it’s also important to place them in your house strategically. Yes, traps as in plural so you should make more than just a single trap.
Place them indoors where the flies are most likely to pose the biggest problems such as next to fruit bowls, houseplants, and garbage cans. If you have flies in your drain, consider placing one next to your sink drains as well.
11. Monitor The Traps
Check the traps daily to see how effective they are. Remember, the traps are their strongest at the start since the solution is undiluted and is giving off the strongest smell, so if a newly created trap isn’t getting any buzz, it could either be due to overlap with other traps or low fly activity area.
If this happens to be the case, then consider relocating the trap to a different location to see if they score more flies to make the best of all the traps present in your home. Monitoring the traps also warns you in advance when the trap is becoming full, or the mixture is running low and needs replacing.
In order to keep your traps working at maximum effectiveness, it’s important to have the attractant mixture replenished from time to time even if it’s not attracting flies. Ideally, you should replenish a fly-less mixture every few days but it’s also okay to leave it for a week if you are running low.
If the trap is full of flies, then the mixture should be replenished sooner to maintain its effectiveness. You can tell that the trap has stopped working if the vinegar aroma becomes weak or the liquid appears to have gone cloudy.
13. Clean The Traps
Once the traps have captured a good number of flies, they need to be disposed of properly to prevent any problems. You can either flush them down the drain or throw them away in the garbage, just make sure the garbage bags are sealed properly.
This way, you can prevent fly-related diseases and quell any chance of attracting more pests and insects that are attracted to fruit fly carrion, both of which could put both you and your neighbors at risk.
Fruit flies reproduce quickly in almost no time. Taking only 7 days to complete their whole lifecycle from eggs to an adult, a single mated fruit fly can lay up to 500 eggs that hatch in as little as 12 hours.
This is why fruit flies can become a real disorder if they are not controlled immediately from the beginning or until every single one of them has been extinguished. Fruit flies can easily make a resurgence if you fail to get just a single fly. Keep your traps working despite no catches to ensure no flies are left behind.
15. Make Multiple Types Of Traps
I'm sure it doesn't need to be said but vinegar isn't the only thing in the world that can attract fruit flies. If you have rotten and expired or close to expiring fruits such as bananas, apples, oranges, and spoilt or spilled milk, beer, or wine then you can also make use of them to cut down the total cost of making the traps.
Apple cider vinegar trap only happens to be the one with the greatest attraction and hence success rate but can run up your expenses as you make multiple traps with them. Here are some instructions on how to make several of these cheap DIY traps to meet your house' fly-trapping quota while still keeping the costs low:
If you have a fruit well past its prime, put it to one last use by chopping them up and placing them in a jar. It doesn't matter if it's an apple, banana, onions, potatoes, or tomatoes. Fruit flies are attracted to the smell of rotted fruity fermented putrefaction so anything goes.
After placing the fruits, place a funnel to cover the mouth of the jar. It's important that you do not plastic wrap with holes as there is nothing to drown the flies, so if they can enter the holes then they can exit the holes just as easily. Unlike the liquid traps, this trap is expected to last a month.
2. Balsamic Vinegar or Wine Trap
Apple cider vinegar isn't the only type of vinegar to attract fruit flies either, although white vinegar is too pungent and lacks the sweetness to attract any flies. Instead, you could make use of balsamic vinegar or spoilt wine as well as wine vinegar to make this trap.
Mix the balsamic and wine in equal parts (it's also okay if you only have one of them) in a container and cover the mouth with a funnel to prevent the flies from escaping easily. Remember, the closer the funnel (half-inch or less) is to the liquid, the more effective the trap is at preventing escape.
If you have a jar of milk that is close to expiring because it was at the back of the refrigerator then you can make a trap from them instead of throwing it away. Add two teaspoons of sugar per half a cup of milk as well as some cracked black peppers to improve the effectiveness of the trap.
This is because although fruit flies are attracted to many things, vinegar is the most effective so the other traps need a little boost. Pour a squirt of dish soap to break the surface tension, stir the mix thoroughly, and then cover the mouth with a funnel yet again.
4. Beer Trap
Last but not least we have the beer trap though we don't actually want you to waste fresh beer, just the spoilt ones. Beers are produced from the fermentation process via yeasts which results in glycerol as a byproduct which the flies are attracted to.
Even in this trap, after pouring the rotten beer into a container make sure to use a funnel to limit the point of entry for the flies. If you want to improve the efficacy of this trap consider cutting up and putting some rotten bananas in the beer.
16. Remove Attractants
While your traps do their work of catching the flies, other factors especially other attractants could be attracting more fruit flies to your house from the outside. These attractants will constantly be increasing the amount of the total fly population that needs to be eliminated despite your traps being hard at work.
Remove these attractants to give the flies' population a proper finite cap so your traps can have a proper fighting chance and you a feasible end goal to look towards. Some of the common attractants are given below:
While we are indeed using overripe fruits as bait in the traps, ensure that these same overripe fruits are not placed outdoors to ensure that it doesn't attract more flies to your house from outside the neighborhood.
Aside from that, you also need to avoid placing any overripe fruits that are not a part of any trap onto the counter as even if the fruits in the traps attract the flies they are killing them as well. Whereas, overripe fruits that are not part of a trap will only serve as a breeding ground.
2. Stagnant Water
Of course, since our main concern is eliminating potential breeding and egg-hosting sites from our homes, stagnant water whether in the tank, garden, or pond is the most common source of flies all over the world.
Thus, by eliminating these sources of flies, you should be able to significantly knock down the total number of flies not only in your house but all over the neighborhood and everyone will be grateful to you for it.
Unlike most common flies that can only breed and multiply in stagnant water and carrion, fruit flies owing to their small size are also capable of breeding inside the drains. The drains contain discarded organic matter which can serve as a source of food for fruit fly maggots.
To solve this problem you should install an in-sink macerator/waste disposal unit to atomize any food waste that goes into the drain. If that isn't an option for you, you can pour boiling water down the drain to kill the eggs or use a chemical drain cleaner to dissolve all the organic matter acting as a source of food.
4. Discarded Coffee Grounds
If the third attractant didn't surprise you then this one surely will. Fruit flies are also capable of reproducing and thriving in discarded coffee grounds.
So the next time you throw your coffee ground outside make sure it's sealed properly. If you are using them for compost, use an alternative until the problem of fruit flies are resolved.
17. Eliminate Favorable Spots
Prevent the flies from coming back by understanding where the fruit flies come from into your house and taking proactive measures to prevent this. Keep areas that could nurture the larvae of fruit flies clean, such as drains and garbage sites, fixing cracks in foundations, and putting window nets.
Don’t leave food and open water lying around and make use of natural pest repellants, such as citrus, herbs, and essential oils to prevent flies from wanting to enter your homes. Practice these fruit fly control measures regularly to prevent any more insect-related headaches.
The most basic way to avoid attracting fruit flies into your house is obviously keeping your house clean and tidy. Clean the house regularly on a schedule to prevent any access to food for the flies.
Give the kitchen especially a good clean with bleach and vinegar (separately), as even food crumbs or dried-up spills of any food juices serve as a significant source of food for the flies. Furthermore, eliminate dampness around sinks, drains, rooms, and the garden soil to prevent the flies from having good egg-laying spots.
What Causes Fruit Flies?
Everyone probably knows that fruit flies love to hover around fresh fruits and vegetables, which would not be a big surprise since their name says it all. But how they travel into your home might be news to you.
Most of the time when they arrive, the fruit flies are usually brought in by you. Yes, you heard that right, these little buggers and their eggs are lingering on your produce and are brought into your home upon unpacking of fruit and vegetable groceries.
Once fruit flies enter your house, they will immediately begin breeding upon landing and will deposit eggs beneath the surface of your prized yet affected produce. So you should immediately get rid of fruit flies in home.
Also, if you don't act fast enough, a female fruit fly will lay up to 500 eggs which can hatch within 12 hours owing to the fast rate of fruit fly metamorphosis. Even if throw away the infested produce, it won't be enough as they will continue breeding in trash cans and garbage disposal once they move in for good.