Are there extra guests in your kitchen that you didn’t invite? Are they buzzing around your fresh fruit and vegetables, or even your trash can? Maybe you left out some empty beer bottles and they’re flying around those, too? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may have a fruit fly infestation in your home.
It is extremely difficult to rid a home of the common fruit fly. Fruit flies are attracted to sugary, organic materials. As their name suggests, they are commonly found infesting fruit. However, fruit flies are also capable of breeding in decaying meat, trash bins and large spills of soda or alcohol. Any fruit brought home following that should be stored in the refrigerator if appropriate.
Regularly wipe counters, clean spills and empty your trash cans to help prevent fruit fly infestations.
The first step in addressing a fruit fly infestation is the destruction of their feeding and breeding grounds. Fruit flies often lay their eggs in rotten fruit and other soft, sweet, organic materials. If you identify a fruit fly infestation in your kitchen, dispose of all over-ripe or damaged fruit. Any subsequently purchased fruit or vegetables should be kept in the refrigerator until the fruit fly infestation dissipates.
If there is no fruit or vegetable matter in your kitchen, check your garbage and recycling bins. Fruit flies may also use unclean drains as breeding grounds. Outdoor drains are likely sources of yard-based fruit flies, as are overripe fruits beneath the trees from which they have fallen.
After isolating the fly breeding ground, control methods may be utilized. Although eradication may require several treatments, the lack of food available to fly populations will eventually cause them to die out.
You can also try chemical methods. Pestman fruit fly attractant is a mixture of food grade ingredients. The smell it emits is very attractive to fruit flies, luring them in for a short time and stopping them from causing damage to fruit and vegetables. Secondly, it is a green, non-polluting product.
It is non-toxic to humans, animals and crops and is very friendly to the environment. It has a long shelf life of 3 to 6 months and is effective against a wide range of fruit flies, such as the oriental fruit fly, melon fly and Mediterranean fruit fly, without affecting beneficial insects, making it extremely cost effective. If you need to treat both fruit flies and other flying insects, we recommend using our yellow boards in combination.
To use, pour 100-200 ml of Bismarck fruit fly attractant into a discarded plastic bottle and cut a 5*20 mm square hole in the side of the bottle, which has been experimentally proven to be more conducive to trapping fruit flies. Hang the bottle from a branch or tree trunk with a hook. In orchards, bottles should be hung 1-2 metres above the ground; in vegetable patches, bottles should be hung 1-1.5 metres above the ground; in other crop growing areas, bottles should be hung flush with the crop, with one bottle placed every 25-30 metres.
