Droso-bl@@dy-phila!

[ILoveAFullFridge]

I've got a plague of fruit flies in the kitchen, and I can't shift them.

I've scrubbed and cleaned. The compost caddy and bin are sparkling and the lids are always on. Nothing is left out.

The things are multiplying! And for some reason they gather mostly on my washing-up caddy thing where I store the sponge and brush etc, not even on the compost bin.

Can I get rid of them without buying insecticide? I really don't want to spray poison in my kitchen.

I think I love you just for calling them by their Latin name

Have you tried fly paper? It's not got any insecticide in.

Are you sure there isn't a soggy bag with a couple of potatoes in it somewhere?

That's never happened to me, of course

Yes. I had one in my fucking wine last night. DH buys bags of apples then throws them in the fruit bowl so they are bruised and manky way before he decides to eat them.

I have a close friend who had this problem, it turned out it was - as the name suggests - because of the fruit. Even though the fruit that was out wasn't off or overripe, it just seemed to attract lots of fruit flies.

With regards to the washing up caddy - not to cast aspersions over the cleanliness of your sponges... but could they possibly do with replacing? I mention this because DM is very clean and washes out sponges and cloths regularly, but they attract flies sometimes and I always think they smell a bit (apparently, this is just me). I appreciate that not everyone gets so funny about sponges, but I feel like they smell really easily and I replace them regularly (every 1-2 weeks). I buy the super cheap ones and never use dish cloths/j cloths as I find that they are the worst offenders.

Stainless

They don't like my fly paper (the window sticker sort).
They're not on the tools, just the caddy, but I'll bin and get fresh ones anyway.
Nope, nothing, nada, niente. My kitchen has never been so clean. (Not strictly true, but they are only in the areas I've cleaned! With fragrance-free detergent.)

We had a plague of these recently, you want to make a vinegar trap, I used a plastic glass about a quarter full of vinegar (I used white wine vinegar as it stinks less than the Sarsons) cling film over the top and then poke a few holes in the cling film.
You can use wine instead but that would be a terrible waste

Are you sure they're fruit flies? There's a type of tiny fly that lays its eggs in the drainpipe (or so DH unreliably informs me.)

And by George, he may be right:

www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Drain-Flies

We've done the vinegar traps , worked a treat

I shall try the vinegar.

we have them - we got a trap like This (except ours hangs up rather than being on legs), filled it with very sweet white wine and it really helped. You rinse it with hot water each morning.
Also we put all the fruit into covered dishes or in the fridge. They still hang around the compost, so I am thinking of putting the container outside the back door, and just carrying the scraps there before bringing the bucket to the heap each day.

I used to work with these little buggers, we used to have fly traps in the lab, you need a cup with about 1 or 2cm of grape juice (can add some yeast if you want) and a teeny amount of washing up liquid - they can't fly out! Also if you have a plastic funnel it stops them from flying out.

It's working!

Thanks

But don't leave lids off the vinegar by mistake...i left mine off the whilte balsamic and it was fruit fly soup by the time i realised a few days later....and with dark balsamic you wouldn't see them; chucked out the dark as well as the white! I had also wondered what they were attracted to....didn't think vinegar!