Fruit flies have an incredible sense of smell. It takes about two seconds (if not one) for them to zoom over to the source of something like a fruity smell -- as I've discovered from experience.
For trapping them, I have used plastic bottles with a wide mouth, filling the bottles with some bait like fruit peel or fruit-infused liquid.
I also add things like stones of fruit to shake around to kill them once they get in.
The latest is wine. It sounds like an expensive way to go about catching fruit flies, but one doesn't completely get rid of the contents of a wine bottle, even after tipping the bottle over to let it drip out as much of the liquid as possible, so that can be your bait.
Leaving a wine bottle sitting around after pouring out the contents works well because the fruit flies will home in on the bottle and travel down to the bottom. For some reason, they don't seem to be able to find their way up and out of the 75cl bottle. Maybe it's too far up for them to fly, and the mouth is also too small for them to find the exit?
No work needed at all -- except to drink the wine... (For non-wine drinkers, I'll have to write another blog.)
That's a great tip! I would like to find something similar to work for mosquitoes, gnats and cockroaches, that are superabundant everywhere around here...
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you've brought this up -- I most certainly won't be paying you a visit, as I'm terrified of cockroaches.
DeleteMy answer to your query is a bit long, so will do it as a blog, for everyone to benefit, as not everyone reads the Comments section, I think.