Fruit Fly Trap

If you have ever com­posted you know how annoy­ing fruit flies can be.  Fruit flies, also known as Drosophila melanogaster, con­gre­gate around decay­ing food.  They love com­post bins sit­ting on the counter wait­ing to be taken out­side.  As a long time com­poster I am used to these annoy­ing lit­tle bugs.  They don’t do much dam­age but they cer­tainly are annoy­ing when they are every­where in your kitchen.

What you will need

Luck­ily there is an easy trap you can make from com­mon tools in your kitchen.  You will need:

• A tall, skinny glass
• A bit of red wine, juice or vinegar
• A round piece of paper
• Tape
• Scis­sors

In the glass put a bit of the wine/juice/vinegar about halfway up. Cut the paper from the edge to the cen­ter of the cir­cle.  Roll the paper into a fun­nel and snip the end of the tip to cre­ate a fun­nel.  Don’t make the hole too big or the flies can get back out.  You want this to be a one way trip.  Place the paper into the jar to just above the level of the liq­uid.  Tape the paper in place and voila you have a fruit fly trap.  Be sure there are no holes along the edge of the glass and the paper.  This will become an escape route for pesky flies.

Fruit Fly Trap

You don’t want too much wine in the glass because you need a fairly deep fun­nel to put in the top of the glass.  The scent of the wine attracts the flies into the fun­nel.  Once inside the shape of the paper fun­nel pre­vents the fly from escap­ing.  They try to go to the high­est point inside the trap and can’t find the hole they entered through.  It takes a cou­ple of days for all of the flies to dis­ap­pear.  You can speed the process by remov­ing their source of food, any­thing decay­ing on your counter fits this descrip­tion.  This can be dif­fi­cult when you are com­post­ing.  The trap will last about a week before the wine needs to be changed or you can’t stand the site of all the float­ing flies…YUCK!