How to remove fruit flies from your kitchen — Christopher’s student essay

How To Remove Fruit Flies From Your Kitchen?

Some simple ways to get rid of fruit flies in your kitchen is to make traps. An easy d.i.y trap consists of apple cider vinegar, dish soap, and a container. Filling a container with about a cups worth of apple cider vinegar and a few drops of dish soap on top will do the job. This works by luring the flies with the smell of the vinegar and then when they go near it, the dish soap layer on top gets them stuck.

Another easy trap to make without those supplies is putting overripe fruit in an open plastic bag. Once a large bunch of flies collect in the bag, quickly tie it shut. Have the bag prepped to be easily tied without hesitation to make sure they don’t escape.

While making traps will help exterminate fruit flies, what about preventing the flies from breeding and being there in the first place? Fixing the issue from the source is going to be one of the best ways to keep fruit flies out of your kitchen.

Fruit flies like to dwell and breed in areas with fruit, produce, fermented items, organic material, and moist surroundings. This will of course be wherever you store your fruit in the kitchen, but can also be in trash cans, sinks, garbage disposals, or mop buckets. Keeping these areas and surfaces clean can help prevent fruit flies from being allured.

Flies are eating rotten fruit on the ground.

This consists of wiping down counters, clearing out garbage disposals, often taking out the trash, and cleaning liquid spills quickly, which will all help prevent fruit flies from having breeding grounds. For garbage disposals and drains, bacterial digesters can be poured if there is an infested drain. As well as keeping your kitchen clean, best practice for storing your fresh produce is in refrigerators or air tight containers. This will prevent a future breeding ground and alluring of fruit flies.

If you’re already accustomed to keeping your produce out, at the very least get rid of it as soon as it turns rotten or overripe. Once produce gets to the rotting point, it is a major breeding ground and place where fruit flies will dwell. Another factor to consider is the produce you buy at the store. Be sure to take a glance and see if any fruit flies are around the produce you’re buying. Even if your produce seems in the clear, wash off your produce once you get home to ensure that any hitchhikers don’t last long.

Overall, keeping fruit flies out of your kitchen starts all the way back from where you buy your produce, all the way to how you run your kitchen. Picking the right produce, storing it correctly, cleaning up the right areas will all help keep the fruit flies out! While all of these methods will work to reduce some fruit flies from lingering in the kitchen,

if there is ever an infestation it is best to call professionals. This is because adult fruit flies can live up to thirty days and within that can lay up to five-hundred eggs. If a population of fruit flies is left unbothered and free to breed, exponential growth of the fruit fly population in your kitchen can and will happen. Professional exterminators will be able to find and get rid of prime breeding grounds and living conditions for fruit flies.

Author: Christopher Pritchard

Western Washington University

Student Scholarships

Every year Thrive Pest Control hosts an essay contest and the reward is a 1-year scholarship at a 4-year university in the United States. This blog post is one of those scholarships.