To ask how to get rid of those tiny annoying fruit flies

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Posting here for traffic

I assume they're fruit flies anyway. There seem to be hundreds of these tiny flies all around my house. House is clean and tidy apart from the bowl of uneaten food I found DD had hidden under my bed but they were here before all that. It's driving me mad. It seems that no matter how clean my house is, we still have this infestation.

Starting to think someone has cursed us. Also they turn into maggots as my charming DD helped me find out. My stomach is churning just remembering the sight.

Please help, nothing I do seems to work! It's really getting me down as it's making me feel like the house is dirty even though I clean every single day for hours...

Do you think a sink volcano of baking soda and vinegar would help? I suppose it cant hurt.

I think people are talking about two types of fly.

One is the fungus gnat, which breeds in plant pots. The flies are tiny and waft about, with really tiny insignificant bodies. They are attracted to yellow sticky sheets that you can get from garden centres.

The other is the fruit fly (drosophila) which are larger, have orangey bodies and are totally resistant to fly spray. They live on rotting vegetable matter/kitchen waste and breed like crazy in kitchen caddies. For this reason ours lives outside... and we use an old mushroom box with limited capacity for waste, meaning we have to throw it outside quite often and the flies don't build up. Only way we know of to get rid of them is to keep waste outside. Or get very good at clapping them out of the air.

I put a pinch of sugar, a little red wine vibe get and a drop of washing up liquid in a glass. Cover tightly with cling film and poke a couple of holes in it. Then I set it by the fruit bowl in the kitchen. That takes care of them.

Red wine vinegar...thank you, spell check...

I tried a few things last night but I have to say the wine trap worked really well. I have some boxed wine left over from a party so will use it up by putting a little in pop bottles and leaving them around.

I had this before!! Absolute night mare. I got a few plastic containers and poured in some apple cider vinegar, covered with cling film and poked holes in. It took a few days but eventually they all went.

Apple cider or wine vinegar will lure them, you have had lots of suggestions about setting up traps. Just remember the squirt of dish liquid as that will preven them from flying once they do get into the vinegar.

Don't forget, you will need one bottle of wine per room in your house to make the wine solution effective. Perhaps 2 in the larger rooms. Make sure DH doesn't try to do it on the cheap.

interesting we have had a few issues with them but gone instantly when rotten fruit chucked.

The wine bottle is great idea.

The window stickers that look like flowers work a treat. I put them in the same spot so the spiders in the house conveniently prefer that window.

Buy a basil plant an put it next to your fruit bowl. It will mask the smell of the fruit and the flies won't be attracted to it.

Get an empty plastic bottle.
Cut it in half.
Put a mix of honey, banana skin, balsamic and other stuff fruit flies like in the base.
Put the spout end upside down into the base.

They fly in through the spout and and trap themselves in the base.

Worked a treat for me when they last invaded!

Where did you find the maggots? That's your breeding ground.

Where is OP?
Is she still drinking the wine?

You need to found where they are coming from. We had a similar problem years ago and found that they were coming from an old potato that was hiding behind a pipe under the sink!

Maggots ? Are they in the bottom of your bin?

I'm with Shtoppen on this.

Also wondering whether it's worth engineering a fruit fly invasion

I hoovered them off teh windows and set ds the task of squashing them.

they like balsamic vinegar. bastards.

i got them from aldi compost last year and they were hell. got one or two this year but nothing like the infestation last year.

We've got a parrot and find her fruit attracts fruit flies....swarms of the buggers if I don't remove uneaten fruit everyday. I have found the quickest wat to get rid is old fashioned fly papers....not pretty, but much quicker than red wine/red wine vinegar/beer/etc. And they're only 99p for ten on ebay!

Oh no, we have fruit flies but I hadn't even thought about maggots! Now I'm wondering where they are...

Use any sweet vinegar, then a layer of veg oil in a jar. They go in for the taste but can't get out again as the oil is too viscose.

Ooh oh - I'm on the run so haven't rift but my friend just showed me the best way to get rid of them....worked a treat!!

Put apple cider vinegar in a bowl so it covers some floating cut up fruit, cover it tightly with plastic wrap, poke some holes in with a knife.....they crawl in and can't get out then drown.

It is disturbingly satisfying

have one flying around me now didn know it was because of dead flowers which i have

Check under rugs and mats too. We had a rug in our old place in the kitchen (rental and it was carpetted - grim, so we had a mat to protect against inevitable food marks). Turns out flies laid eggs underneath the mats...

I had them when an onion had rolled into the under stairs cupboard and then gone off