Kitchen infested with fruit flies. Help me with your best tips to get rid of them?

[Apolloanddaphne]

My kitchen is infested and it is horrible. We have cleaned the kitchen and DH is single handedly hoovering up as many as he can with a cordless hoover. But we need to try and capture and kill as many as we can to eradicate them.

I have set traps with vinegar and washing up liquid which are working a bit and well as jars with cider vinegar and apple with cling film over and holes punched in to entice them and trap them. They are not working at all.

Have any of you got better methods? Thanks.

No one? I just don't know what else to do.

Clear all the work surfaces. Nothing out. No fruit bowl etc etc. Bleach everything, open windows. They will only stay if there is a food/egg laying source.

nothing out.
no fruit bowl.
no tomatos.
wipe all surfaces.
if you have a sink macerator stop using it.
empty and wash the food waste bin.

no onions festering in a drawer?

Go to homebase and buy fly tape.

Is there any wood in the kitchen that's got wet?

Get some peppermint oil and citronella oil and use that to mop the floor.

Check underneath kick boards for anything

I've had infestations in the past also! Apparently they also like coffee! Have you cleaned the lip underneath the cooker and the edges of the work surfaces? Any plants in the room? I think (not 100% sure) that moist soil can attract them too.

Other than removing ALL food sources, and the vingegar traps, I've also used sticky fly traps above the bins and around the kitchen. Good luck.

Yep remove any food - no food out ever.

Get a can of raid to get rid of them then make sure they don't come back by leaving food out. I would also spray the raid in the bin.

You need to put apple juice or cider (not cider vinegar) with a dash of washing up liquid in shallow dishes so the flies detect it more easily. The shallow dish part is important - don't use jars as they're too deep for the flies to be attracted to. Don't put cling film on as it blocks entry - once the flies land on the liquid, they will drown. Also, if there are flies at a high level, put the traps on a high shelf if that's possible within your kitchen layout. Basically you need to make it as easy as possible for the flies to reach the apple juice.

If they're still hanging around a couple of days after you've cleaned the kitchen then you've missed something. Tiny bit of fruit mouldering at the back of a cupboard? Unseen gunk in the sink drainage holes? Some unnoticed organic matter mixed up in your paper recycling?

I had to stop using a juicer a few years ago because there was always a tiny area that never seemed to be completely free of detritus ...

Blitz with bleach. No eco friendly gubbins. After, spray with Raid or whatever including surfaces. Close kitchen door and leave it for an hour. Then wash it all down again.

I just got rid of a pantry moth infestation in one go like that. They were in my oregano (how middle class ) but had got into my main food cupboard.

They can hatch in plug holes and mop heads, out of soil in plant pots. Get inventive to where needs a glug of bleach.

Although don't bleach your plants.

Thanks. Lots of good tips. I will get on to them soon. I've removed the onion holder I had out, got rid of all plants. The fruit bowl is there but covered. I need to deal with that. I can use apple juice although the vinegar and washing up liquid seems to be working ok.

The fruit flies are laughing at your fruit covering ...

Boiling water in the sink, often. A small glass of red wine works better than vinegar & washing up liquid. Empty and clean garbage can. Remove plants with soil. Wipe all surfaces.

If you like bananas there is a really good banana bag at Lakeland that can keep the bananas in the fridge without going brown.

Put cling film over the bowl/cup with cider vinegar/wine in, make a couple of tiny holes in the top and they get trapped in there. Amazing how many that one attracts!

The last time they visited me it was because they'd fallen in love with a single, unreasonably rotting potato in an otherwise perfect bag.

I had this once and it was a pot plant I'd over watered that was attracting them. Another time I had a pot plant become infested with ants. I have recently been considering getting pot plants again but have just now remembered why I went artificial!

They also like damp fabric, sponges and tea towels, oven gloves, things like that. So any fabric, including any nets.

Have you Googled "cluster flies"? Do they have olive coloured bodies, or yellow? Do you live in a rural area or somewhere where there is livestock nearby (ie droppings or muck heap in fields)?

We had cluster flies in a pretty little cottage on the outskirts of a farm. The flies swarm around the livestock and droppings, but seek somewhere warm and sheltered to lay eggs - in our case, under our eaves. They hatched year upon year, we had dozens in every room in the summer with a few sleepy flies appearing around the lights and from behind radiators even in winter.

You can pay a pest removal company to sort them out but that obviously costs - we emptied two cans of fly spray into the loft and waited. Thousands came swarming through the hatch and dropped, erm, like flies. We hoovered them all up and were fly free for the rest of the year - but our mistake was not going up into the loft and hoovering up the bodies. It attracts them back again, although I'm reliably informed that the new generation of flies will only seek out the same safe warm place to lay eggs again anyway. I guess you have to be prepared to carry out a culling exercise every year.

A couple of pots of sundews (Drosera) on your kitchen windowsill will eat loads of fruit flies.

I have an array of sundews, pitcher plants and Venus fly traps, and they munch their way through all flying insects entering my kitchen, plus the occasional spider and once a slug (which must have come in with the water butt water).

@TrufflePioneer I am pretty sure it is fruit flies and I think I know where they came from. I had some plants on the window sill and one I threw out a week ago as I thought it was breeding something on it. The other ones must have also had them incubating too.

I don't know about in the house but in the garden we use a pheromone trap to stop them infesting my pumpkin plants, that and a spray for plants. They were living in the soil, it was so gross, never seen anything like it. I just hope they haven't damaged them in someway.

Pour a good glug of bleach followed by a couple of kettles of boiling water down your sink plughole...could be drain flies.

I second fly tape. It was the only thing (apart from keeping the area clear of EVERYTHING that might attract them) that worked.