How to Prevent Fruit Flies: Getting Rid of Home Pests Advice

2022-09-27

You didn’t have time to throw away the banana peel, but they were already here. Hateful fruit flies seem to come out of nowhere, always arriving in flocks and multiplying at a frantic pace. How to prevent fruit flies? This question is probably asked by everyone who has encountered these nasty insects in their kitchen. The most powerful weapon against these pests is regular hygiene. Today we will go through the favorite corners of drosophila in houses and try to put things in order there to ward off uninvited guests.

How to Prevent Fruit Flies?

Conduct an audit in the kitchen, removing spoiled products to avoid fruit flies at home.
Arrange general cleaning for fruit fly prevention.
Learn how to deter fruit flies and use these tools.
Use chemicals or traps to neutralize the flies that appear.

Step-by-Step Guide on Preventing Flies

If you are looking for effective tips on how to prevent fruit flies in the house, keep on reading to make your home insect-free.

Drosophila: identification

Drosophilas are tiny but highly unpleasant neighbors in the kitchen. An adult one is about 1/8 long, but you rarely see one alone. It almost always moves in a huge company. These red-eye insects have an incredible ability to smell food that is about to spoil at great distances. Rotting fruits are vital to them, and their entire body is tuned to catch the subtlest smell emitted by overripe vegetables and fruits, which a person may not even feel. It would be helpful primarily to protect fruit from fruit flies. But fruit is not the only thing that might tempt them to make its way to your home. Here is a far from the complete list of objects that might attract drosophilas:

Ripe fruits and vegetables, especially bananas;
Leftover food and waste;
Dirty containers, especially from beer and wine;
Pet food;
Sewerage;
Garbage containers;
Mops and rags for cleaning;
Moist soil of vases with flowers.

One female can lay about 500 eggs, turning into adults in almost a week. For this, it needs only moist organic materials in the fermentation stage. If you do not avoid fruit flies at home, they will live in your kitchen for about a month.

How fruit flies get into the house

These pests might not only be intrusive but contaminate food with bacteria and other disease-causing organisms. They may choose your kitchen as their target, sensing that a fruit plate or trash can has been there since last night. Drosophila can fly in from the outside through poorly closed windows and doors. Infection might occur through overripe fruits or vegetables previously infected and brought at home. In addition, the eggs of these insects might get into the house with the fur of pets and on shoes.

Fruit fly prevention: look around

If you want to say goodbye to drosophila, you should think like drosophila. Imagine where you could have a delicious meal if you were a fly. Where would you be cozy? Then conduct an audit and do everything not to leave them the opportunity to eat and reproduce. First of all, protect fruit from fruit flies. It is essential to keep clean in all areas and stick to the following recommendations.

Products:

Regularly go through stocks of products, and throw away those that have begun to spoil;
Store loose products in moisture-proof containers and check cereals for flies;
Store all perishable products in the refrigerator;
Wash and dry the bread box before laying each new one.

Kitchen:

Do not leave dirty dishes;
Maintain cleanliness in the refrigerator;
Do a general cleaning of all surfaces, paying attention to cracks where a piece of food can fall;
Thoroughly wash the stove, oven, and microwave oven, removing grease;
Clean the sink from the outside and inside because food residues can often get stuck in the plum;
Replace old sponges and rags;
Take out the trash on time and thoroughly wash the container with a disinfectant to prevent fruit flies in the trash can.

Pets:

Regularly change the water in the pet’s drinker and hide the remains of its food.
Plants in pots:
Loosen the ground, remove leaves, and wash flower pots with a cleaning agent. If you find pests in the soil, you should replace the soil and treat the plants with special means;
Plant geranium, basil, or mint in a pot — the aroma of these plants repels drosophila.

Fruit Flies Attack! What Should I Do?

If these insects have already settled in your house, then you should make a trap, use insecticide, or try to get rid of unwanted guests using folk methods. Let’s consider each option in more detail.

Trap

Take a glass, put a bait in it (a piece of fruit, a little sweet drink, or apple cider vinegar) and cover it with a film with small holes. Change the bait daily because new insects may start hatching on it.

Use of pesticides

Treat the locations of flies, avoiding the surface in contact with the products. Pay particular attention to cracks and crevices near the garbage container, stove, windows, and doors.

Folk methods

Many are probably interested in how to deter fruit flies using home methods. Here are some examples:

Fresh horseradish head, peeled, cut into pieces, and spread throughout the kitchen;
Tobacco, fir cones, juniper, or incense, burned in an old pot;
Camphor heated in a pan;
Essential oils of eucalyptus, clove, tea tree, lavender, and lemon, which might be added to an aroma lamp or an old fumigator;
Natural vanilla pods or vanillin solution.

FAQ About Fruit Flies

The number of drosophilas seen one morning in the kitchen can be frightening, but you should not immediately run for dichlorvos. Instead, find out where they come from to avoid fruit flies at home.

How do I keep fruit flies away?

Cleanliness helps maintain your home flies-free. First of all, you should keep the kitchen clean. Getting rid of spoiled fruits and vegetables promptly and cleaning plums in the sink is crucial.

What causes fruit flies in the house?

Drosophilas find the places with food the most attractive. They fly to the smell of ripe or fermenting fruits and vegetables. Besides the opportunities of being full, this is an ideal environment for their reproduction.

How long until fruit flies go away?

It depends on your efforts in fruit fly prevention. If they do not find something to eat in your kitchen or smell an unpleasant odor for them, they will quickly leave.

Avoid Fruit Flies at Home

Full-fledged fruit fly prevention can take some time because it is essential to pay attention to each potential location of drosophila. Moreover, the result depends on the regularity of your actions. Even a perfect cleaning carried out once a month will not guarantee you get rid of these insects if you leave a plate with apples on the table every day and do not take out the garbage.

Does drosophila bother you? Share your methods of dealing with these pests.

References:

How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies (Kevin Carrillo)
https://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Fruit-Flies
How to get rid of fruit flies in your house (Adam Russell, Texas A&M AgriLife Marketing and Communications)
https://entomology.tamu.edu/2020/07/07/how-to-get-rid-of-fruit-flies-in-your-house/
Fruit Flies (University of Kentucky College of Agriculture)
https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/ef621
Do Fruit Flies Have Food Preferences? (Kassandra G. Savage) http://csef.usc.edu/History/2006/Projects/J1920.pdf
Fruit Flies (Drosophila) (Living Science Handout) http://web.as.uky.edu/Biology/faculty/cooper/Population%20dynamics%20examples%20with%20fruit%20flies/LMP-023aDrosophilaFruitFlies.pdf

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