Fruit Flies: How to Get Rid of Them
Fruit flies can be extremely annoying, especially during the warm months of summer. In many places, they thrive through out the year.
Identifying Fruit Flies in Your Home
These insects, known to scientists as Drosophila, are smaller than the common housefly, averaging at about an eighth of an inch. They are usually brown in color, often with bright red eyes. You can read more about them in our Fruit Flies Guide.
While this page focuses on commercial solutions available for you from Amazon, you should always keep in mind that the best form of pest control is prevention. This is not about “How to Kill Fruit Flies”, so much as it is “How to Control Fruit Flies” and make sure they are not present inside your home.
Prevention is key when it comes to pest control of any type of flies. Don’t let your home become a theme park for flies and keep garbage out of reach. It must not smell either – and hopefully, that is not too much to ask for in most homes! With the annoying Drosophila, make sure there is no vegetable matter rotting away or just over-ripening anywhere in or near your home.
Next, block your windows with proper insect screens, with finely meshed netting that will essentially “filter out” nasty mosquitoes and flies too. The screens are not foolproof and flying insects will still get in, so now you have to deal with those, hopefully fewer, fruit flies, who manage to enter your home every now and again.
With fruit flies, you could try a fly swatter, and even an electric fly swatter, but with these smallish bugs, it may be less effective. Or as some would put it, more of a challenge. If you don’t want to try and beat the odds swagging and swishing your bat around, you should try placing fly traps around your home.
Popular Fly Traps
Mr Sticky Fly Tape is a simple enough device that holds 81 feet of sticky non-toxic tape. This can be quite effective with flies in general and is actually powerful enough to trap larger more sinister flies too. The device lets you easily roll the tape once it’s been covered with, yikes, dead flies, and present the local insect population with a fresh deadly strip.
It is one of those ideas that are brilliant in their simplicity. It’s also safe to use, around animals and children (though should be installed away from the reach of kids).
It’s recommended for outdoor use mostly, where you can expect an interesting crop of various breeds of flies. Depending on the size of your infestation, it can last for a while.
Check out the Mr Sticky Fly Tape here on Amazon
The SpringStar Fruit Fly Trap is a product designated specifically for the pesky little drosophilas and for being used in the kitchen. It is not only non-toxic, but even comes with a certification declaring it as green eco-friendly. Essentially, this is a jar, with an inner construction that serves as a one-way highway for flies. They can get in, lured by the scent of the patented lure, but they can never get out.
The principle is the same as with many a fly trap, but this one comes with a unique fruity lure, designed with nothing but fruit flies in mind. What’s more, the jars are fairly decorative and their content remains out of sight, so you can keep them in your kitchen without a problem.
