Something BUGGING You? How to Kill Fruit Flies Fast!

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Kill fruit flies fast around the clock with apple cider vinegar, a drop of soap and a disposable open container.

With citrus harvesting season around the corner, fruit flies are most unwelcome guests when it comes to bringing your round, tasty vitamin C doses inside the house. As a gardener or grower–or anyone with the perchance of buying too much fruit at the store–the art of killing fruit flies fast is another tool in your tool chest! This post will give you a couple ways to fight off these disgusting flying monsters with items you already have under your kitchen sink.

**Warning** there will be proof of these effective measures with pictures. Photographic proof is my thing. This means if you don’t want to see dead fruit flies, this is not the post for you. However, there is a method of trapping and releasing the fruit flies outside towards the end of the post.

Stick with it! The experiments get increasingly more dramatic than just passive apple cider vinegar…

Apple cider vinegar and a drop of soap is one of the most popular remedies and one that is quite effective at killing fruit flies quickly:

Grab a disposable container. Let’s be real–no one wants to eat or store anything in a container used for this event. You could argue the vinegar will permeate the plastic, or you just don’t want to think about all the fruit flies that will be plastered to the sides. Whatever excuse (or all of them!), just throw the damn container away. I opt for cottage cheese, or similar 16 oz type containers.

Pour enough apple cider vinegar to cover the bottom. Apple cider vinegar smells sweet and attracts the fruit flies.

Next, add a drop of dish soap. The purpose of the liquid dish soap is to spread above the apple cider vinegar, sticking to the feet of the offensive fruit fly when it finally lands. It keeps them from walking across the vinegar, effectively trapping them in place and sealing their fate.

Make a few of these traps to kill fruit flies at a faster rate and move them around to wherever the fruit flies are congregating.

What about a lid?

Now you may have hit up a couple blogs to find a remedy and noticed some of them recommend containers with lids. Perhaps they suggest a metal lid with holes poked through (which I don’t keep in house–I recycle my jelly type jars ASAP). In keeping with the theme that this is stuff we all have, plastic wrap and a rubber band will do.

I tried this method first, placing plastic wrap over the top and securing it around the lip of disposable container with a rubber band. Next, I poked holes with a fork and pulled the plastic tight.

It was maddening to see only a couple fruit flies on top of the cellophane instead of below after about a half hour. In fact, they were landing everywhere BUT the apple cider vinegar trap…

!@#$%^&*?!?! Why are the fruit flies on the towel and not a single one on the container of apple cider vinegar?!?!

In my desperation to kill the fruit flies faster, I ended up removing the plastic on one of them. Whether or not the holes were too big or too little…the important part was that the container WITHOUT any cellophane was getting permanent visitors within 20 minutes.

Disposable container? Check! No lid? Check! Dead fruit flies? Check! Check!!!

I was thrilled with the results and unwrapped the rest of the containers I had already scattered throughout the room.

Conclusion: Skip a lid. Don’t create any barriers. Roll out the welcome mat.

Adding different tasty and smelly items did not seem to attract them any more than plain apple cider vinegar.

For instance, I added a few morsels of banana (pictured above) to the mix and there were just as many visitors as the other containers.

The bait method.

There will still be clusters of flies on various other items around the kitchen. It’s going to happen because they are naturally attracted to them.

You can capitalize on this!

For instance, leave out a scrap of discarded food, like a piece of sweet potato.

Next, find a mailer or magazine you aren’t too interested in out of the mail pile. This will be a disposable fly swatter. This is a case where bigger is better so they are less likely to escape. Make sure you keep your “fly swatter” far away enough so as not to give them a heads up when their time has come.

Then circle back in 15-30 minutes and see how many visitors have landed.

Bingo!

There is NO method more SATISFYING than this one. You gotta smile when you successfully hammer half a dozen all at once.

Fruit fly bait for batting practice. These aren’t moving anymore…

Slightly less physical and no-kill bait method #2:

If you find the bugs collecting on something smaller you can trap them with a large bowl or bucket. We used a cloth used earlier to wipe off the remains of dinner off little chubby fingers and a face.

Let them land on the object, then quickly slam the bowl over them, creating a dome where they can’t escape.

Next, slide a heavy piece of paper or magazine below the bowl.

Ask someone to open the door and carry the bowl out of the house on the piece of paper.

I will readily admit, this method was not as effective since the paper tended to create gaps on the way out the door, but it was better than doing nothing.

Sliding an air bake cookie sheet under the paper would have been better to escort the trap out the door.

Having written this post with pictures, I realized I could have set up the tray–either a flat airbake cookie sheet or an old school curved edge cookie sheet under the cloth, so all I had to do was slam the bowl on top and walk the tray out the door. Next time… (oh, wouldn’t it be nice if there wasn’t a next time…).

Keep your house clean.

Removing the sources is also necessary. It probably goes without saying, but laying all these traps is not going to help if the source of the problem is not gone.

In conclusion…

Rather than using the citrus to fight off winter illnesses, when fruit flies tag along, we’re bringing in infection. Once you have these unwelcome guests, these methods will help you kill fruit flies fast.

Whether or not you try one or both of the active methods, the passive method is an effective way of eliminating the problem even when you are sleeping or away from the house. The best part of the passive method is you most likely have all the ingredients at home right now!

Please share what works for you in the comments below!