Fruit flies are a nightmare. They show up from seemingly nowhere and start going after every sweet thing they can find. They don’t care if they are tracking hundreds of deadly illness and bacteria all over your food, risking your health and well-being. Furthermore, they are practically mindless, only eating. They multiply very quickly with females having up to 20 eggs and a short hatching period of only two days in a warm environment. They will go after any type of fruit but that is not all. Likewise, they also love alcohol. Wine, and spirits are good, cider and beer are best. They, however, cannot lay eggs nor drink the alcohol without dying, the same goes for vinegar. This is the key to getting rid of them, vinegar, and alcohol.
The fruit fly undergoes a series of transformations called instar’s to become an adult fruit fly. The first stage is after mating. Fruit flies are sexually active at all times and for their entire adult lives. The female is born sexually active after only forty-eight hours and can mate with males immediately after that. Female fruit flies are capable of storing multiple inseminations separately and use them for insemination at a later date. This makes the fruit fly one of the most powerful reproductive insects on earth. They can multiply in days to form thousands. The birth of a fruit fly starts when the egg is laid. It takes a total of two weeks for the egg to reach adulthood. This is at room temperature and slows dramatically in the cold and becomes impossible when it is too hot. Twenty-four hours after the egg is laid the larva hatches. They undergo a moulting stage where the larva shoves off its hardened carapace and sheds several parts. This is the first instar. They must go through three separate moulting’s to become adults. They prefer to find a warm place for their third which results in the hatching of an adult fruit fly.
The question is, how do you combine them properly? What is the most attractive combination to the fruit fly? Some feel that the alcohol is the key, others say the vinegar and a lot of people agree that without some rotting fruit the trap does nothing at all. It is very important to get the mix right or else you will end up with more fruit flies and empty traps. The best choice is a wet piece of fruit that goes bad quickly, apples and oranges are not good for this at all, neither are pears. Mango and banana are some of the best options. You will then put this into a cup or jug and fill it up a quarter of the way with apple cider vinegar. This is the trifecta. The fruit rots and makes alcohol while the vinegar creates a powerful amplifying smell. The fruit flies cannot ignore it. To catch them you need to put plastic wrap over the cup and poke tiny little holes in it. With a sewing needle is best. Not too many or they will escape. This will trick them into entering the cup, they will not be able to escape and will suffocate from the vinegar fumes. Even if they get a chance to lay eggs the eggs will die from the vinegar as well.
