From crawling ants to scary spiders, bugs are not something you want to find in your house. Fruit flies especially are incredibly annoying and seem to pop up out of nowhere.
Sure, you can shoo them away, but a better long-term solution is learning how to get rid of fruit flies for good.
Fruit flies are attracted to fermenting fruits and vegetables in your home. By rolling up your sleeves and doing a little kitchen cleaning and stocking up on some pantry staples, you’ll be footloose and fruit fly-free in no time.
The first thing to do
The first thing you should do if you spot little black bugs flying around your home?
Make sure you’ve encountered a fruit fly and not a common lookalike, such as the fungus gnat. Gnats tend to be gray or black, while fruit flies range from light tan to reddish-orange and brown.
Fruit flies have a taste for too-ripe fruit and other produce and thrive on high-fructose substances. Fungus gnats, on the other hand, live in soils and on plants, so if you think you’re spotting those, the issue may not be in your fruit bowl.
If you do believe you’ve got a fruit fly (or a whole family of them!) on your hands, you’re going to want to take action. You’re also going to want to do it in a way that’s actually effective (after all, as much as we’ve come to appreciate them, even the best indoor mosquito traps are no good at catching these tiny flies!).
Below, I am sharing how to get rid of fruit flies, from all-natural remedies to chemicals that you can spray on those little suckers, for good. Also, I was writing about holes in clothes, how to hide a key, how to wash your underwear, and why shen man piercing makes you will better, and how to whiten your teeth at home. Check it out as well!
Where do these bugs come from?
Fruit flies hate clean surfaces, so keep those countertops as clean as possible.
When you spill some fruit juice or other sugary substance, don’t wait until your favorite TV show is over to clean it up. Keep those sink drains free of food particles and eradicate all the gross residue in and around the drain.
If you don’t, those spots become the perfect destination for fruit flies to breed. You do not want that.
Females lay their eggs on the surface or inside the fruit that’s overripe, rotting, or decaying. Each female fly can lay up to 500 eggs at a time, so it’s important to take action as soon as you spot the first fruit fly.
After hatching, the larva feast on their surroundings (like a past-ripe banana) for a few days, before evolving into fully formed adults.
Fruit flies life cycle is pretty quick—fruit flies are capable of mating just two days after they reach the adult stage—which means your cleanup clock starts ASAP.
How do you get rid of fruit flies?
Use apple cider vinegar
Fill a bowl or glass with apple cider vinegar, cover with plastic wrap and a rubber band to seal the edges, and poke tiny holes in the top. The fruit flies will be attracted to the vinegar, but once they’re inside, they won’t be able to escape the plastic wrap barrier.
Mix apple cider vinegar and dish soap
Fill a bowl with the vinegar and add a drop of dish soap, mixing well. The apple cider vinegar tempts the flies with its stale sweetness, and the dish soap actually works to decrease the surface tension of the liquid, so the flies are immediately immersed upon investigating and can’t escape.
Bust out an old beer
Leave a bottle of old wine or beer out near where the fruit flies were spotted. They’ll be lured in by the stale beverage, but the narrow neck of the bottle acts as a natural barrier to keep them trapped.
