333461 Thu Oct 12 02:04:21 -0700 2006 14 29 Not About Food 0 1939918 is there anything i can do about the dozens of tiny flies in my kitchen? i have some food out on the counter, like potatoes, garlic, onions, lemons, magoes, and i like to have them there but the flies are grossing me out. i saw a plant the other day that supposedly eats flies. it's kind of ugly but if it works i would get it. thanks! Thu Oct 12 02:04:21 -0700 2006 12350 ndl 1 1939949 We have off-and-on fruit flies. Whenever I leave a glass with a bit of wine on the counter overnight it's loaded with [drowned] flies in the morning. I've never done it intentionally to catch fruit flies, but I don't see why it shouldn't work. Thu Oct 12 02:20:32 -0700 2006 1939918 10207 FlyFish 2 1939983 I do the wine thing too, but I add an apple core in it and some dish soap so when the flies land on the wine the soap breaks the water tension and makes them drown. apple cider vinegar seems to work the best for me though. put that in a glass with some dish soap and set it out and then the next day you can see all the flies that have drowned in your little trap. Its fun and gross all at the same time. ps: now that its getting colder all my fruit flies are gone. That's the only good thing about cold weather Thu Oct 12 02:35:20 -0700 2006 1939949 24546 bitsubeats 1 1940066 I have an actual recipe somewhere that works wonders and would got rid of them in our last apartment. It basically involved water, T. or two sugar, t. vinegar and a drop or two of dish soap. Would kill them all within a day or two. I suppose you could just use the wine with a drop or two of the dish soap, but cheaper to do it my way. Good luck! I'll repost if i can find the recipe. Thu Oct 12 03:29:54 -0700 2006 1939918 12487 krissywats 1 1940861 thanks for the help, guys. i tried the wine thing last night and they did flock to the bowl, but they mostly just sat on the edge, so only a few drowned. would it be crazy to get a sticky mouse trap and put something sweet on that? perhaps i'll just have to wait for it to get colder... Thu Oct 12 15:36:32 -0700 2006 1939918 12350 ndl 2 1941167 I use a little pyrex custard cup put about a 1/2 tsp dish soap in the bottom, 1 TBS or so of either cider vinegar or red wine, and then nearly top it off with H2O, leaving maybe 1/4 inch to the lip... I had an infestation around a turning squash last weekend and this caught 30-40 of the little X@##%@s within 1/2 hour. Thu Oct 12 17:10:52 -0700 2006 1940861 16756 Scott D 2 1941177 seriously, try the sugar, vinegar, water, soap mix.....they will go in and the soap kills them. Thu Oct 12 17:12:45 -0700 2006 1940861 12487 krissywats 2 1941208 I do the wine/vinegar trick, but put saran wrap over the top of the glass with pen-sized holes punched into it. They're sort of stupid and can't figure how to get back out, they hang out upside down until they get exhausted and fall in. That, and a fly swatter first thing in the morning when the sun comes up, that seems to be their most active time. Oh and if it gets real bad, I pour some bleach down the kitchen drain, don't know if it's true but I've heard that they lay their eggs in there. Thu Oct 12 17:21:50 -0700 2006 1940861 11097 coll 1 1940889 I used to bartend at a place with huge open windows. We'd put out shot glasses of sweet vermouth, triple sec, or another sweet, but sticky liquor. Those always worked really well for us. Thu Oct 12 15:46:29 -0700 2006 1939918 22039 emmie 1 1941197 I used to manage a kitchen and the city health inspector taught us all kinds of tricks. Clean your ceiling. No lie, that's where the nests and eggs are. They are barely visible black splotches. They're easy to miss, so I had one of my workers scrub the whole thing whenever there was an outbreak. It always worked. Any sort of traps or poisons are treating the symptoms, not the cause. Fruit flies reproduce so rapidly that you can kill scores of them but if you don't wipe out the eggs there will be hundreds more. Thu Oct 12 17:18:58 -0700 2006 1939918 10793 Morton the Mousse 2 1941726 They also like to take up residence in your sink's P-trap. A little bleach down the sink every now and then can control an outbreak (assuming that you don't have fruit sitting around). Thu Oct 12 19:59:47 -0700 2006 1941197 12023 Hungry Celeste 1 1941218 I've been doing a lot of experimenting with this in the last week. Fill a small bowl (like a custard bowl) with some wine or juice. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Using a toothpick punch a few fine holes in the wrap. The flies can get in but not out. I've ridden our house of fruit flies using this method. Thu Oct 12 17:23:42 -0700 2006 1939918 16284 hoagy294 1 1941855 You can buy sticky traps, like a big piece of tape, from garden stores for them. Thu Oct 12 20:32:28 -0700 2006 1939918 39874 chowser 1 1941922 Another remedy: make a piece of paper into a cone that fits snuggly into a glass. Put a piece of apple in the glass and close off the glass with the paper cone. The flies will go down the cone to the fruit and won't be able to get out (kinda like a lobster trap). Just open the glass outside to get rid of them. I am going to try cleaning the cieling, too, next time we have FFs. Good luck! Thu Oct 12 20:53:55 -0700 2006 1939918 36325 Procrastibaker 1 1942156 i've had them before, and vacuuming them up actually works! i just sucked up as many as i could, would walk away until the stragglers settled, and then vacuumed some more. it actually worked quite well. cleaning the ceiling sounds like a good idea too, i'm going to remember that. Thu Oct 12 21:55:32 -0700 2006 1939918 17095 twiggles