Fruit Fly Trap

Beer or wine does the same trick, but seems to work faster.

And I have been guilty of putting the offending fruit in my oven. Leaving the door open. After the bugs find it, shut the door and crank the oven. 5 min later...no more bugs.

I do the same thing as the other responses... apple cider vinegar and a drop of dishwashing detergent. Works like a charm. I leave it out on the counter when I have fruit out.

I second Lola P., but I cover it with a plastic wrap and make a few holes. I also found that it doesn't have to be orange palmolive dish detergent. Any dish detergent will do.

i put apple cider vinegar and a few drops of orange palmolive dish detergent. i don't cover it, but leave it on kitchen counter. it gets filled pretty quick.

I did get 'swarmed' this year with fruit flies, and held them at bay for a while with the vinegar and detergent. They kept coming back though, and I read that incense works! And it did.

Still, they seemed unrelenting as veggies came in from the garden. I finally got this little 'apple' shaped thing from walmart in the bug/pest control department. They seem to be better under control, but not entirely gone.

I try not to leave fruit or veggies out much at all anymore.

Damn bugs!!!

best luck!

The sweetest wine you can find - kosher wine like Manischewitz is inexpensive (buy the smallest bottle) and extremely sweet. Add a drop or 2 of dish soap to increase the surface tension of the water so anything that touches down actually sticks, sinks, and drowns. I put it near the fruit basket in the kitchen but put a few around the house, anywhere you see flies. Sometimes the flies get into the area where the trash is (if you put your fruit cores and banana skins in there vs. a compost heap) so put a little dish in there too. I use little sauce dishes or juice glasses - you only need a half inch of liquid though. So more dishes with less liquid will get your faster results. When it looks gross, rinse and replenish.

I also find that fruit flies are attracted to other things at the farm stand - tomatoes in particular. So it's not just the bananas that are the source of your problem. And the flies came in on the fruit - it's not really because the bananas sat around too long. However, remember that fruit flies multiply like crazy - that's why they were always the "species of choice" in biology experiments!

I have a venus flytrap. It does the trick! In the absence of a carnivorous plant, a strip of double-stick tape hanging in the area will solve your problem as well.

I use fly paper. It ain't pretty, but it works and it's not toxic to my pets.

You could use red wine vinegar or red wine.

well, grab some ACV next time you're out. it really does work best, but balsamic doesn't do too badly. i'm firmly in the camp of ACV with dawn, saran wrap with a few holes in it. it doesn't do the trick 100% (nothing does, i find) but it keeps them down to a level that's not crazy making.
at this time of year i always have produce on the counter, if it's not bananas it's avocados or tomatoes. i don't keep it there longer than it needs to ripe and get eaten or processes, but as soon as one batch goes, another is harvested or bought!
khairete
S.

I suggest that apple juice and white vinegar won't work. The chemical composition is different. If your white vinegar has a mother in it you might be able to make apple cider vinegar hy putting the cloudy, stringy mother into the apple juice and wait a few days before adding the dish soap.

I'd just buy some apple cider vinegar. It's cheap. Probably less than $3.

Mother forms in the bottom of some really old bottles of vinegar. It's happened to me. I don't know if the mother is different in each kind of vinegar. When I think about my experience I think the mother was in a bottle of acv.

In the long ago old days housewives made acv by leaving apple juice in an open container on the counter so that something in the air would land in it. Similar to the way to make the sponge for sour dough bread or for making sourkraught.

F. B.. I have also tried all of these before.Never worked for me either.,

I finally decided to let the flies gather on the fruit and then I use my big vacuum to suck them up! (keep your vacuum close by so the flys will not know what is coming!

Works great and is easy to "get 'er done". No prep, no mess.

The first thing you need to do when you get bananas is wash them. All bananas have fruit fly eggs and washing will get rid of them. Lowes and Amazon has a fruit fly trap. It looks like a small apple and you add a vinegar solution to it. It kills fruit flies. Good luck!

We've been doing the apple cider vinegar and dishsoap mix, in any room we've seen the fruit flies, and we're winning the war after a week. It took us forever to figure out where they were coming from (the garage) and after that we started winning. They are terrible.