August 17, 2011

DIY Fruit Fly Trap

Remember that old saying, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?  Well the truth is that you can catch the most flies with soda bottles and fruit juice. This probably won’t go down in history as one of my most exciting blog posts, but I thought I’d share this nifty trick for an annoying problem.

During the summers, we tend to get fruit flies in the kitchen.  One fruit fly is not a big deal, but they like to hang out by the dozens which can get quite annoying.  Luckily, fruit flies can be easily outsmarted and all you need is a soda bottle.



A soda bottle with a smaller opening, like a 20 liter or 1 quart bottle, will work best.  First, cut off the top half of the bottle.

diy-fruit-fly-trap

Then, invert it and place it upside down back into the bottle.  Then fill it with something sweet like orange juice.  The fruit flies will smell the sweet juice and will fly into the bottle.  Sadly for them, they can fly in but won’t be able to fly out, thus creating a fruit fly trap of doom.

fruit-fly-trap

After a couple of days, the fruit fly trap will be full of the little guys and your kitchen will be fruit fly free.  I would show you an after photo, but I doubt anyone wants to see a soda bottle full of flies.

Is it weird that I feel bad typing up this blog posts?  I feel bad killing any bugs (except mosquitos- they’re evil) and I even try to capture and release regular sized flies, but I haven’t come across a better solution to get rid of these little buggers.  Do you have any tricks to get rid of household pests?

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