In late summer and autumn you might notice more and more fruit flies appearing in your kitchen. This is, among other things, because of the ripening fruit and vegetables you keep in your home, combined with the heat.
Fruit flies aren’t just annoying and unsightly, they can contaminate your food by laying eggs and carry bacteria like Salmonella and E.coli. These can transfer onto surfaces and food, which you might come into contact with. As well as making sure you keep your kitchen clean, there are things you can do to trap the fruit flies that might have started to appear in your home.
And you don’t have to spend a lot of money on special fruit fly traps, as you can make one at home using an ingredient which costs just 35p in your local supermarket such as Tesco.
White vinegar is often hailed as as a holy grail cleaning product around the home, as it has so many uses. It can be used for countless household tasks, from cleaning glass and mirrors to cleaning mould and mildew and limescale. And it turns out you can use it to catch fruit flies too.
TikTok content creator Nic, who posts on her @nes_s.world regularly, shared the hack on her page, and it’s been seen by over 2,000 people so far. Nic said: “Just a reminder, don’t spend money on fly traps.”
She then showed a contraption she had made at home using a glass jar with a bit of white vinegar inside, covered by clingfilm and an elastic band. She also created holes with a fork in the clingfilm to make sure the fruit flies would be trapped inside.
It can clear that with this hack, which she said “works better than anything else”, she managed to catch many fruit flies, who were trapped inside the white vingar.
The theory is that vinegar attracts fruit flies. According to Clegg’s Pest Control, the insects detect the scent of acetic acid, which is the chemical in vinegar which gives it its strong scent. This is the same scent the fruit fly is looking for when on the hunt for rotting fruits and vegetables.
That being said, white vinegar will attract them, but it won’t kill them, as it’s not poisonous to them. So you need a tracp which can cause the flies to drown.
How to get rid of fruit flies
What works for one person might not work for another. If this doesn’t work for you, there are other methods you could try.
Firstly, it’s recommended to store your fruit and vegetables in the fridge or sealed containers in order to avoid attracting them. You should also throw away any rotting or overripe fruit, make sure your drains and bins are clean, and always wipe surfaces to remove any juice or crumbs.
If white vinegar doesn’t work for you when it comes to making a trap, you could also try apple cider vinegar. Alternatively, you could make a wine trap by pouring a small amount of red wine into a class, covering it with plastic wrap and poking holes inside to trap them.
Or you could roll a piece of paper into a funnel and place it in a jar containing a bit of vinegar or fruit juice. The flies will be attracted and go in, but can’t escape.
