How to Get Rid Of Fruit Flies: Simple and Effective Methods
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Have ‘gnats’ in your kitchen? They may actually be fruit flies! These tiny, red-eyed flies can be a nuisance to handle. It also doesn’t help that they seem to come out of nowhere.
If that sounds a lot like what’s happening to you, don’t worry! This complete guide will help you get rid of fruit flies using easy, time-tested ways without any professional help.
What Causes a Fruit Fly Infestation?
Fruit flies are a common kitchen nuisance especially active in late fall and summer when the produce they love is in abundance.
Also known as vinegar flies, they are attracted by orange rinds left on the counter, tomatoes ripening on a windowsill, bananas turning brown in the fruit bowl, and lettuce left in the sink.
The pin-head sized creatures do not bite but are an unsettling sight circling lazily around your produce.
Due to their particularly small size, fruit flies can enter a house from the outside through common window screen. They’re also brought into the kitchen on the produce you bring home from the market.
Fruit flies will breed anywhere there is damp, decaying organic matter. This includes in sink drains (dark, slightly larger pests specific to drains are known as drain or moth flies), garbage pails and compost buckets, tile grout, and even washcloths.
Because they will breed in so many different places, these pesky insects can be difficult to eradicate once they are established.
Don’t be so frustrated by the persistence of the short-lived fruit fly that you resort to anything other than safe, organic methods of control.
If you don’t deny the flies a place to breed by employing thorough sanitation methods, you can spray pesticides all you want. The pest will come back.
And even those who recommend using pesticides on insects of all kinds don’t recommend spraying in places where food is stored and prepared.
How to Identify Fruit Flies?
Fruit flies are so tiny, ranging in size from less than 1/16th of an inch up to 3/16th of an inch, that they disappear to all but those with the sharpest vision as they fly from bright light to shadow.
The head and thorax are yellow and tan while the abdomen can be dark, even black. Many types have red eyes.
Life Cycle of a Fruit Fly
The female fruit fly will lay between 500 and 2,000 eggs, one at a time, usually on or near fermenting fruits or other decaying organic material.
The eggs, contained in a moist secretion, are left on rinds, fruit meat, and other, usually damp sources.
The larvae hatch out in about a day, then feed for five or more days on the yeasts produced in the fermenting vegetable matter (or drain slime) before moving to a drier location to pupate. They take two days to become sexually mature.
Flies live no more than one or two weeks and mate twice during their short lives.
Are Fruit Flies Harmful?
Fruit flies are mainly thought of as a nuisance pest, known to buzz around un-refrigerated produce and kitchen sinks.
But the gnat-like insects are labeled ‘filth’ flies because of the bacterial contamination they can spread as they lay their eggs on fruits and vegetables.
As the fruit fly moves from surface to surface, it transfers harmful pathogens around your kitchen and to the foods prepared there. Drain flies can potentially carry more harmful contamination.
How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies
Insect sprays will kill adult fruit flies if you have a problem with them, but they won’t stop the eggs from hatching. The only way to get rid of all the fruit flies in your house is to follow a step-by-step process.
Luckily, it’s simple and easy to do. Here’s how to get rid of fruit flies step by step:
Start by Cleaning Your Kitchen
Sanitation is job number one. Denying fruit flies access to the decaying organic matter they seek prevents their multiplying.
This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Besides what’s in your fruit bowls and on your kitchen counters, they will breed in drains and around sinks, on mops, on damp wood under sinks and behind walls, and at the lips of cans and bottles.
Get Rid of Overripe or Rotting Produce
Check all the fruits and vegetables to see if they are rotting, decaying, or too ripe. To prevent female fruit flies from laying their eggs on these surfaces, dispose of any problematic veggies and fruits.
Refrigerate All Produce
Don’t store produce on your counter. Refrigerate all fruits and vegetables, even (especially) the bananas.
This is good practice to prevent the introduction and spread of this household invader and is absolutely necessary when fighting established infestations.
Clean As You Go
But let’s face it, the kitchen is where we do all messy work so how do we really keep it clean to get rid of fruit flies?
Well, there’s a reason why commercial kitchens have a policy called ‘clean as you go’ that we can benefit from as we cook and prep around the kitchen.
As you cook, clean up kitchen peelings and other vegetable scraps immediately. Take all compostable material out to the compost heap as soon as you’ve produced it.
Or keep a compost crock with a tight sealing lid next to your prep area to keep cores and peelings before sending them outdoors.
If your kitchen scraps, including citrus rinds and banana peels, will ultimately end up going out with the garbage, start a scraps bag that you keep in the freezer until it can be put out for pickup with the trash.
Banana peels, left overnight in the trash, are especially attractive to the flies. Instead, freeze them.
Thoroughly clean and dry all food prep areas, including under counters and around stoves; anywhere stray matter might build.
Wooden cutting boards can harbor eggs and larvae. Wash them in hot water frequently and allow them to completely dry.
Take Care of Your Trash Cans
Make sure all garbage cans have tight-fitting lids. Keep them covered. Keep your cans clean inside and out, including edges around the top.
Thoroughly wash all containers headed for your recycling bins, especially fruit juice bottles and soda cans.
Check Your Drains
Think pests are coming out of a sink drain? Cover it with plastic wrap overnight and check for flies underneath come morning.
Keep drains clean and free of organic material with natural drain cleaners. Run garbage disposals frequently.
Pouring equal parts of baking soda and salt, then topping with an equal amount of white vinegar should help keep your drains keep.
Check under and around sinks for leakage. Fruit flies will lay eggs on any organic surface that is moist, especially underneath sinks.
Reseal fixtures and re-grout tiles around sinks to stop leakage. Allow wood and other surfaces under sinks to dry completely after you do.
Use DIY or Store-bought Traps
Now that we’ve removed all their food sources, we could wait for them to die off but they can live for two weeks or longer in the right conditions.
So a faster way to do that is to use traps to lure and capture adult pests. Some traps are specifically designed for indoor use.
Another great way is to use a DIY fruit fly trap. Making one or two homemade vinegar traps and placing them around food storage and prep areas can be highly effective.
Here’s how: Make a cone from a large file card or half sheet of paper leaving a small opening at the bottom and insert it into a jar containing a half-inch of apple cider vinegar.
Apple cider vinegar works better than white vinegar because it smells like fermenting fruit. The flies go down the cone towards the vinegar, but once inside can’t find their way out, circling the lip of the jar wondering how they got there in the first place.
Make sure the cone seals at the edge of the jar (we rub the lip with oil which seems to capture the insects trying to squeeze through).
You can achieve the same results by, alternatively, mixing apple cider vinegar in a small bowl with a few drops of dish soap.
Microwave the mixture for 20 seconds to enhance the smell which will draw them in, and because the dish soap lowers the surface tension of the liquid, the bugs will get stuck and drown.
Other DIY Traps You Can Try
A piece of plastic wrap over a custard cup or other small bowl with a small hole approximately the size of a pencil poked in the plastic near the center is also a quick and effective way to trap circling flies.
The traps also work with beer and wine. Yeast traps attract with fermentation.
What If Fruit Flies Still Persist?
If pests persist despite your best efforts, look for hidden breeding spots, like a bruised potato in the back of a cupboard or a juice spill that’s run under a cabinet or the refrigerator.
Flies can breed in water trays set under house plants. Clean them after dumping runoff from watering.
Replacing window screen with very small-mesh screen can help keep pests from entering your home from the outdoors.
Lavender has been shown to discourage fruit flies. Basil, mint, and thyme, on the other hand, have been shown to be more attractive to the pests than slices of banana.
Use can even use whole spices from the pantry to help with these pests! Clove will repel this household nuisance. Stick as many cloves as you can (at least 25) into a fresh lemon and add to your fruit bowl.
Eric is now retired, but is still a renowned gardener known for his expertise in composting, organic gardening and pest control, utilizing pesticide-free options, such as beneficial insects.
Eric believes when you do something good for the environment, the effects will benefit generations to come.
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