I guess I must be slow this summer. Just realized why there are so many of them now. A week ago, my son and I tore down the rather dilapidated pergola in our back yard. A pergola which was COVERED in grapes. By the time we got it down, the patio smelled like a winery and smushed grapes and grape juice were an inch deep. We shoveled up all we could, but I know there are probably still a lot of rotting grapes out there. And the back door is open a lot these days as the guy finishing up my kitchen (while a lovely guy), tends to leave the door open when he goes out on the deck to saw, etc.

Oh well....trying some homemade traps to see how they'll work.

Terro Fruit Fly traps work great. You can get them at hardware stores, home depot, Lowes and Walmart

I leave a bit of wine in a glass on the counter over night. They love it and drown in it. Sadly a waste of wine But it works.

Find a jar or other container with a fairly wide opening. Make a long, narrow cone of paper with a fairly narrow opening. Put a piece of fruit in the jar, insert the cone and tape it securely to the jar making sure there are no places the flies can get out.
I saw one photo of a funnel used instead of the cone, and one photo where someone had used the cone in a glass of wine!

Here is a link that might be useful: The thrifty home

Fill a ramekin with a 1:1 ratio of apple cider vinegar:water and add a drop of dishwashing liquid to it, then place it where the fruit flies flock. You can leave this out indefinitely, and/or repeat when needed. For maintenance, whenever I bring fruit into the house I wash it immediately.

I used EAM's vinegar, water, and dish soap mix last summer during a nasty outbreak. DH even insisted I not keep the compost bucket in the house at that time. I felt victorious waking in the morning to see a bowl of dozens of dead fruit flies. Me kill things. ;)

Melissa--how great that you're making kitchen progress! I'm looking forward to the conclusion your kitchen nightmare.

Thanks all. Tried the saran wrap over bait last night...worked pretty well, judging from the number of trapped flies, but there are still lots of them marauding around. Going to put some vinegar/dishwasher dishes out today.

Breezy, thanks! It's looking better...all cabinets now have doors, but of course, some are unpainted. Still haven't gotten my $ from the home improvement commission. Hopefully in Sept., when I can get a painter in to finish up. That will mean the job is done, pretty much exactly 2 years after it was supposed to be.

I've had bouts with fruit flies and ants at different periods. Ick.

Unfortunately for me, they didn't give a damn about vinegar, wine, beer, or fruit. Unless I was eating or drinking it myself, that is.

I also found I needed to scour inside my garbage disposer. I noticed a distinct difference after I cleaned that really well. I barely cook, so whatever was in there, I don't think I want to talk about .

This pergola you pulled down. Wanna trade new for used beams? [LOL] This coming up weekend is supposed to be under 90 degrees. Perhaps we can try again!

Good luck with those stinkers.

Since they can live about a month you did not wait long enough before replacing the smorgasbord.

Fill a ramekin with a 1:1 ratio of apple cider vinegar:water and add a drop of dishwashing liquid to it

I just tried this and it works great! It is funny, the old proverb is wrong in this case: Here, you catch more flies with vinegar than with honey!

I had a horrid infestation of this little beasties last summer. I tried the traps mentioned, and although it trapped a lot of them, there were still multitudes of them flying around. These are the things I did, not sure which worked in the end to get rid of them.

Cleaned my sinks really well, including the garbage disposer and poured bleach down the drains and let it sit for awhile. I keep the stoppers in the sink when not in use.

Don't let dirty dishes sit in the sink. Rinse and put in the dishwasher if you're not going to wash them right away.

Don't leave dirty dish clothes sitting in the kitchen.

Keep all surfaces in the kitchen clean.

Pour sudsy water in the plants in the kitchen. Supposedly kills eggs that may have been hatched there.

Keep trash can clean of any food waste.

So sorry to hear about the FF infestations - one problem is the FF have become resistant to most chemicals - so avoid using chemicals. FF also love to live in drains - so be sure you clean up your disposers.

Reporting in...I know have several dishes full of drowned fruit flies, but still some loose swarms. Getting the bleach to pour down the drains now.

Christine...I've got an appt. for a haircut Sat. at 1:30, otherwise free. Would love to see you.

Funny, we've lots this summer too. Course the huge quantities of fruit on the counter might help.

I have a compost bucket that's always got peelings in it. I leave its lid a little ajar and let them settle inside, then gently slide the lid in place and walk the bucket over to below the range hood. Crank that on and get a good suction going up, open the lid and bye-bye. It's possible it's even humane; haven't checked whether they all fly out the rooftops!

Besides that, clean clean clean clean. I find they like the oddest things too, not just fruit. Pay attention to what they cluster around and try mightily to avoid that being left around.

We had an awful infestation last summer and narrowly averted one this year.

Aside form all of the aforementioned things to do, keep your floors cleaned also. Grease that spatters around the area around the oven for instance, well they can live off that too. Gross I know. Same for anywhere else grease may collect like the top of the stove.

Also - ice cubes ran through the garbage disposal is a good thing too. The iciness kills off the eggs from what I hear plus it's good for the disposal since the ice cubes grab leftover grease onto them.

Last summer, I barely could keep on top of it and the only thing I think that finally killed them off was the cooler weather setting in - they don't like that and can't breed in that weather.

This year, as soon as I saw them (they came in from my CSA box, a peach was bruised and had a large hole in it with the flies in it, and when I complained to the owner of the CSA he actually had the nerve to tell me to cancel the rest of the summer instead of apologizing!) I got rid of the offending fruit, cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom, including the drains "just in case" they had found their way there already, and started to put all incoming fruit in the fridge for a while. Thankfully - I caught it before they took hold this time.

Be cautious of putting sudsy water in your plants.
The type of soap can spoil the dirt and kill your plants.

I knew this, but once while day dreaming out the window and washing a glass in the sink, rather than pouring the soapy water into sink, I watered my plant.

That poor beautiful lush baby went into death throes immediately. I had to take it out of the dirt (trash that) and soak it in fresh water, and slowly it began to put out new growth. It's been several years and it's yet to completely recover.

I hate flying bugs. Phobia. Can't even watch them on TV. I watched what was evidently a traumatic experience in 3rd grade and have been afraid of them flying into my nose ever since. I see bugs and evidently I immediately began to rub my nose. Wasn't aware of that until it was brought to my attention.

arrrrrrghhh!

Melissa, it's supposed to be cooler this weekend. Lemme see what I can load on Friday!

Oh my - I never knew fruit flies could quite unnerve so many. sivyaleah - I get where your CSA farmer is coming from. Imagine the state of infestation of his life with ripe fruit and veggies 24/7; objecting would simply be one of those does-not-compute moments.

We in (glass?) houses can afford a different perspective I suppose. I don't like em but they aren't my room 101 if you follow. You could try the zen approach that you're lucky enough to have such yummy fresh, ripe fr/veg around? Good point about the floors -- grease is one of their favs.

Christine - soap bursts animal and plant cells wide open! Poor babies... I've btdt too. I wasn't as diligent as you in saving the poor thing - amazing how quickly it withers. [from the Annals Of The Bad Mommy department].

I guess it would have been better had he (not the farmer himself, it's a store that handles putting together the boxes from a lot of farmers) apologized instead of tossing me out since he had actually asked all of his customers to let him know if there was ever something was wrong with their boxes :/

Next year I'll just plant more veggies myself I guess! I had awesome tomatoes this year :D

"Next year I'll just plant more veggies myself I guess!"

If it grows outdoors it can get fruit fly eggs.

Grease attracts them? I'm surprised ONLY because my son is a baconaholic...loves the stuff and makes himself breakfast with it at least 5 times a week. So, we now seem to have a permanent "grease" can on the counter. And of all the places the fruit flies have been found swarming around in the kitchen, that's NOT one of them. Still, it will be in the trash outside, as soon as I get home tonight!

So far, the traps seem to be working well. Certainly have caught or killed many...but there are still some live ones.

Cleaned the drains and poured bleach down them yesterday too. Maybe we'll be pest free in another few days.
Thanks for all the suggestions!

Melissa: a stave of execution for the bacon grease, at least due to my random pronouncement. There's something that was surprising me recently about their attraction, but on more careful consideration, I don't think it was the grease. I think it was vegetable tailings and also flowers a little past-prime. There was grease in that melange as well and I spoke hastily in fingering it. But I agree with you, I have oil sitting out and recently even chicken fat and it didn't have flies nearby.

My apologies for speaking out of turn!

More fun fly observations: we have an azalea bush that was alive with bottle flies.

Scrub jays eat honey bees. OK, that's a stretch for relevance.