If your kitchen is abuzz with unwanted house guests, you’re not alone. Fending off fruit flies this time of year can be a bit of a challenge, especially with how quickly they can breed.
One night you could go to bed, the next morning wake up outnumbered and don’t let their size fool you – these tiny critters can turn into formidable foes.
“What happens during the summer time is you get warm temperatures which increase the fruit flies reproductive rate so they can go from egg to adult in nine days in 25 degrees Celsius,” Tyler Wist, a research entomologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, said.
“… and each of those females can lay up to 400 eggs.”
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The worst part is they seem to appear out of nowhere said Hayli Riach, who lives in a condo in Saskatoon where she constantly battles these pesky bugs.
“I think they come in through our window and then in our hallway we have big crack under the window so they likely crawl under,” Riach said.
Wist said at this time of year, if people aren’t picking up from underneath their fruit trees, they might want to start since the rotting fruit just serves as breeding ground for fruit flies.
“Insects are very good about smelling what they like to find their way to,” Wist said.
“Sometimes they’re an added bonus when you buy things at the grocery store so make sure you’re looking for fruit that’s not overripe.”
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So how do you fend off a full-on fruit fly invasion once one arrives? Wist said the first step is to dig through your fruit basket to see if anything has spoiled in the bottom and toss out any fruit with a cut surface on the counter.
“You have to get rid of their oviposition sites. Your rotting fruit, your overripe fruit, get rid of that and you get rid of that issue,” Wist said.
“If you have adults still flying around the house, they like fermentation products.”
Wist said you also have permission to uncork that bottle of red wine; the cheaper the better.
“You pour a little bit in the bottom of your wine glass, cover the top with Saran Wrap really tightly so it’s almost like a drum, and then you pop a little drosophila size hole and they will come down, crawl through that hole and won’t be able to escape again,” Wist said.
“Then of course you have an open bottle of wine that begs to be finished.”
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