BleepingComputer.com: Fruit Flies! They Have Invaded My Apartment...

I have put on a few pounds recently and in my efforts to remove them decided a little healthy living would be a good thing. So what do I do..I go to the supermarket and pick up some fruit. Some bananas, peaches, nectarines, apples etc. Whats wrong with fruit!

Well nothing...cept all those damn fruit flies. Now my apartment is crawling with them and I have resorted to filling jars with red wine as traps. This does work. I think groov told me to do this...dont remember, but someone did. They go into the jar, get stuck in the wine and die. Little buggers.

Also, old fashioned fly sticky strips (if you can find them) placed high on the ceilings will help. Change them out once a month.

Another trick is to put 1/2 cup of laundry bleach in all drains - sinks, tubs, showers, etc once a week or so. This kills the eggs that are laid often in the waste pipes.

At least it's not a TseTse fly infestation... he he

I heard Pyrethrin spray kills them easily...

Yeah, i know some people on counterstrike were blaming their poor playing on fruit flies a while ago.... I wonder if it's a flourishing year for them, or they're just concentrating in certain locations.....

What a waste of perfectly good wine.
John

jgweed, on Aug 22 2006, 08:23 AM, said:

You can still drink the wine! It'll add some protein.

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Actually this wine was so bad I am not sure its fair to call it wine.

The following list includes some suggestions for do it yourself fruit fly pest control:
Remove organic garbage and anything else that might attract fruit flies from the house as frequently as possible.
Hang sticky strips from the ceiling in your kitchen or pantry to get rid of fruit flies.
Fill a small jar or container with vinegar, fruit juice, or fermented fruit and insert a paper funnel - fruit flies will be able to fly in but not out.
or keep fruit in freg
Fruit flies prefer a diet of yeast, that marvelous microbe that eats fruit and spits out alcohol. Since flies disdain unripe fruit, and since that is precisely the sort of colorful paperweight that supermarkets tend to distribute, it's more likely that your Drosophila melanogaster came from the great outdoors than from the grocery store.
The obvious next question is, if the fruit came home "clean," and there are flies on them now, how long will it be before there are eggs or larvae (AKA "maggots," of course) inside the peaches? Do you eat the fruitt, or not? The answer is there could be eggs on the fruit instantly, and 30 hours later, larvae -- perhaps 500 of them.

If you don't disturb their happy community, the tiny, white larvae will spend five or six days gobbling the yeast and alcohol-rich products of fermentation, then crawl out of the sludge, hatch into red-eyed monsters and start the cycle again. And once they're established in your house, they can sustain themselves on an impressive range of nutrients. They can live on the slime inside a sink drain. They can flourish on a sour mop. They'll eat damp flour or food fermenting quietly in a crack in the floor. They've even proven capable of existing on a diet of alcohol fumes, their bodies deploying a special chemical that converts the alcohol to nourishment before it can poison them. All things considered, prevention seems key: Just eat the FRUIT FAST

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Thats what I have been doing with the wine. Seems to have helped quite a bit.

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That has definitely helped.

Don't look at it as a problem. Look at it as an opportunity! All you need now is a pair of chopsticks and you can start sharpening your FPS skillz.

This post has been edited by Mr Alpha: 22 August 2006 - 05:08 PM

Now I'm a Fruit Fly with a totally different meaning! Saw this awesome all girl auzie band at our Roots & Blues festival last year,and they call their fans "Fruit Flies".I have all their CD's. Check out their web site.
Ya Grinler,we have the same prob...is very annoying,but should only last for another few weeks.

I suppose you could always get a pet frog or toad. They'd be in 7th heaven with all those flies.

Seriously, keeping veggie and fruit scraps destined for the compost pile outside or else buried in dirt in a very large can will keep them from invading the garbage, and keeping the fruit in the 'fridge' mostly keeps them away from the fruit. I say mostly, because I've seen the buggers in there too, but not many and very lethargic.

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I understand that in China they use chopsticks to catch mosquitoes. Such dexterity. Chinese chopsticks are longer than Korean chopsticks.

Orange Blossom

p.s. Now what about the snake under my stove? Yes, you heard me - a snake under my stove that also leaves snake skins under my bathtub : 6 foot long snake skins. Na, I think I'll leave him there. Good burglar deterent.

This post has been edited by Orange Blossom: 23 August 2006 - 02:13 AM

Snakes under stoves? Damn i would not be able to sleep knowing there was a snake lurking in my house/apt.

You'd have a tough time of it here: I've found snake skins in the house from at least three different snakes. But I must say that finding them under the bathtub is a bit much.

And yes, a snake under the stove at least part of the time. I discovered him when a mouse trap with a mouse in it vanished under the stove and, I heard the distinctive sliding scraping sound of snake. The snake decided to have dead mouse for supper. Saved me the job of emptying the mouse trap though .

KoanYorel, on Aug 21 2006, 10:50 PM, said:

Bleach is bad in septic systems and the environment in general. What I do is use a slow drain enzyme treatment - this is different from plugged drain treatment. This has three effects: one - a couple treatments does in the fly colonies in the drain (There was a huge one I got rid of that way when I moved into the house), two - the enzymes eat the gunk that both restrict and eventually clog the pipes and provide the breeding ground for the buggers in the first place, and three it improves septic tank performance by adding good enzymes to it.

Orange Blossom