Build fly trap yourself - get rid of fruit flies

• Fruit fly traps for DIY
  • 1. The vessel
  • 2. The liquids
• Alternative means
• Get rid of fruit flies
• Deter fruit flies
• Fruit flies: Harmless than the commercial means

Black clouds over the fruit bowl cause black clouds in the mind ">

Fruit fly traps are very easy to build yourself, and the ingredients you have certainly in the household. You just have to give the fruit flies the right treats in the traps. Getting rid of fruit flies forever only works with some effort, but the advent of mini fliers can be reduced to a bearable level quite simply.

Fruit fly traps for DIY

The perfect fly trap consists of the right vessel with the right interior (the right filling).

1. The vessel

As a fruit fly trap, everything is suitable, in which the fruit fly fly in well, but can fly out bad:

• Unwashed wine, liquor and juice bottles
• empty food jars (gherkins, sauerkraut, jam)
• empty cans (preferably canned fruits or slightly sweetened pickled canned food)
• Container with rim to fix a lid

The selected container must be provided with a cover so that the fruit flies can not escape again. If you have opted for a container with a lid (jam jar, gherkin or even bottles), the existing lid is provided with holes through which the flies can crawl. You can easily create the holes with a screwdriver.

Containers without lids are simply covered with kitchen foil. In these you can now pierce with a fork or a small knife small holes. As a precaution, the kitchen foil can be fixed to the glass with a rubber.

2. The liquids

If you are hungry, you can eat a lot, but you can also feed your fruit flies with your absolute favorite food. It flies particularly well on mixtures of dilute alcohol and acid, as found in fermented fruits: 2.5 to 20% alcohol, 0.6 to 5% acid. So you can use many household liquids in the fight against vinegar flies:

• Wine, liqueur, whiskey, already fermenting juice taste the "Gärfliege" very well
• The classic, a glass of vinegar and water, does it too
  • in the luxury version with a little yeast and / or sugar

• Remains of cucumber water, peach juice etc.
• Lemon juice attracts fruit flies and smells good
• dissolved denture cleaner

Tip: Combat experts put a drop of detergent into the liquid, this lowers the surface tension of the water and the flies drown.

Alternative means

Fruit fly control is also possible with the following simple and non-toxic means:

• Sticky fly traps like yellow sheets
• Sticky moth traps spread with some jam
• Greasy weed is the carnivorous plant with an appetite for fruit flies

Get rid of fruit flies

In order to get rid of fruit flies permanently, a small preventive battle plan is needed, in the implementation of which often households plagued by fruit flies should check their habits in the kitchen guidance:

1. Do not lure fruit flies into the kitchen

Fruit flies can smell good and fly over some distance to a source of odor. Since fruit flies live in about 50 species in Germany, develop from egg to fly in less than 2 weeks and like a lot of what humans consume, fruit flies are always around us.

If you have a "real garden", a garden with (fruit) fruit and compost, this delicious fragrance rises from the orchard or the compost pile most of the year, where the fruit flies live. In many of our gardens, however, only barren "breeding stars" or exotic imports grow, where insects have to look elsewhere for food.

If you do not have a garden, you can satisfy "its share" fruit fly with a naturally planted balcony, if it does not exist, the fruit flies remain only the kitchen. The easiest way to keep them away is to set up a small insect paradise somewhere nearby.

In the garden a compost with a few native (berry) shrubs or other fruit trees around it, on the balcony a few insect friendly shrubs, in the apartment without balcony z. B. as a hanging beam in front of the kitchen window.

2. The kitchen and the handling of the food

If there is no alternative accommodation, you can only keep the fruit flies away from your kitchen with great care. Her favorite food is and remains (fermenting) fruit, fruit juices are just as good, jam and much else that people eat, but is not despised. The smallest remainder is sufficient, fruit flies can smell 1000 times better than we do, and are satisfied with about 1/4 gram weight even with very little food.

You can do that in detail if you do not want to see any more black clouds:

• Do not leave ripe fruits or vegetables lying around
  • above all, no climacteric (after the harvest ripening) fruits
• Do not leave juices or other sweet / alcoholic liquids open
• Wipe up spilled liquid immediately
• Frequently bring biowaste to the bin
• Thoroughly airing
• very close-knit fly nets in front of the windows
• Close window when cooking fruits or add liqueur

This means for a living household with frequently used kitchen either a complete change of behavior (each clears its tracks immediately to the last remnant away) and a complete change of stockpiling (everything, even the tomatoes, which stay in the fridge actually not good does, must be stored locked). Or the household stays as alive as it is and you buy the good old bowls with the fly screen for open-stocked fruits and vegetables and live otherwise with a few occasional fruit flies.

In fact, if you're going to clean up any remainders immediately anyway, and give up any food right away, and still be struck by fruit flies in sizeable black clouds, you should review general kitchen hygiene. In the cleanest household, habits can creep in, creating splendidly laid tables for fruit flies. Often enough little things to attract fruit flies:

• Work surfaces in the mornings instead of evenings
• Sponge use a lot, but rarely in the microwave to disinfect

Deter fruit flies

The living household could then try to use the animals' enormous olfactory potential "the other way around", namely to give the little flies a few frightening scents around the nose (combined with an inviting open window).

A bunch of dried sativa (Santolina) in the kitchen should be able to bring fruit flies to emigrate. Fresh onions do not like the vinegar flies. The lemon flavored with cloves also do not like the mini-fliers, as well as the scent of some (drilled) chestnuts.

Fruit flies: Harmless than the commercial means

After the danger has been averted and also the prevention of the next black cloud has been dealt with, there follows a little background knowledge for thorough people (which also makes it immediately clear that the danger is not even a perceived danger and you live quite well with a few fruit flies can).

The "fruit fly" is not a fly of a special kind, but colloquially only a tiny fly that likes to eat fruit. Especially like this "fruit fly" fermenting fruits (fermentation fly), sticky juice (mustard fly) or simply vegetable acid (vinegar fly).

The original, actual fruit flies are called Tephritidae or Bohrfliegen and live in the wild on fruit plants. But these are pretty big flies with striped wings, which have little to do with the tiny things in the kitchen and will hardly get lost in a kitchen.

The more well-known (kitchen) fruit fly comes from the family of Drosophila (Drosophilidae) and was also called Taufliege for centuries. Until the Anglicisms arrived at our place and the English name "fruit flies" made the fruit fly in direct translation to the fruit fly. Among the 50 German species are some culture followers who seek their food as a fruit fly, goat fly, mustard fly, vinegar fly in homes and kitchens. Otherwise, there are only "white flies" of the white flies (moth sign lice) and the sciarid mosquitoes, which are more likely to be seen on the kitchen herbs or houseplants than around the fruit bowl around.

When the flies are tiny (2mm), colorless / translucent and fly on food, they are fruit flies and you can relax.

All "house fruit flies" have one thing in common: they are more harmless than harmless. You do not decimate your fruit basket; 0.25 g of body weight needs around 0.004 g of food, you do not notice. They do nothing to your food, they can be washed and eaten as normal. They do not transmit diseases, whoever claims that, probably wants to make money as a pest controller. They do nothing to you, they can neither bite nor sting. They do not even get on your nerves for a long time because they only live a few days.

Any insecticide (in-house biocides = "deadly means against life") that you could use against fruit flies has the potential to do you more harm than the fruit fly. Biocides are recognizable by the packaging imprint: "Use biocides safely. Always read the label and product information before use "and most of the time on the colorful hazardous substance symbols.

You can buy natural attractants for fruit fly traps, but they are not harmless, at least not for your wallet: you buy plain vinegar, for € 99.70 instead of 39 cents per liter.

Perhaps fruit fly plagued by the research group around Prof. Dr.. Dr. Dr. med. habil. Hanns Hatt, Department of Cell Physiology, Ruhr University Bochum, www.cphys.ruhr-uni-bochum.de. They have discovered that fruit flies not only use an olfactory receptor protein for fragrance detection (like humans), but use a second nonspecific receptor protein to support # 1 (receptor for the particular fragrance) - a nice trick to smell about a thousand times better to be able to as we. An insecticide to be developed has already been thought of, which eliminates the non-specific receptor protein - then the fruit fly would be similar to "smell-blind" as humans and would probably starve to death on the way to the fruit basket.