Winning the War

Soon after I moved into my current apartment, I discovered that my kitchen had become a breeding ground for fruit flies.  While I certainly prefer to deal with an infestation of fruit flies than houseflies, my ultimate goal is to not deal with any arthropodic invaders at all.  I keep my kitchen very clean and any fruit I have is either stored in the fridge or in a closed bag, so I was quite surprised to be dealing with any flies let alone so many.

I talked to my sister, Margot, about my frustrations with having to hang fly ribbons and she suggested putting out an open jar of apple cider vinegar as a trap.  The vinegar attracts the flies and, thanks to a drop of dish soap, the surface tension is broken so that when the flies try to feed, they fall in and drown.  I put out a trap the next day, but only a few flies took the bait.  I was still catching plenty of flies on the ribbons, but there were still even more inside my kitchen trash can.

I did some research online and decided that the vinegar trap was only half of a solution: I needed to take away their other food source.  I emptied the trash and replaced the liner so I could start with a blank slate and I reset the vinegar trap.  Additionally, anytime I threw away any fruit or vegetable matter, I wrapped it in a grocery bag to add a layer between the garbage and the flies.

The next day, the vinegar trap was a very popular place.  It had captured a few dozen flies, but there were several dozen more hanging out nearby (maybe waiting for the line shorten).  There were no flies in the trash can and the fly ribbons were disgustingly crowded.  Within a week, the trap had captured about fifty flies and there were only one or two flies buzzing around.

We're now about a month removed from when I first put my plan into action and there's still about one or two fruit flies hanging around.  I don't know if I can completely get rid of them, but with my current plan in place, they will at least be very well controlled.