I have a bunch of fruit flies in my house, and NO fruit. How do I get rid of them?
An interesting question, the fruit flies are there, but there is no fruit, hmmmm. Actually the name of these tiny pests is a bit misleading. Yes they do love fruits and vegetables, but they will breed in other places. All they need is some moist organic material, you can find that all over your house.
The most likely source of your fruit flies is the garbage, there may be a banana peel in there or something. If your problem has lasted longer than the amount of time it takes you to take the garbage out, and I hope that’s fairly frequently, there are other places those little creatures can hide. The organic material required by fruit flies can be miniscule, look at the size of the flies themselves. Your drain may have something stuck in it, you may have empty bottle or cans, even beer bottles and cans can produce these flies, and mops or cleaning rags. There is a lot of organic material on cutting boards and counter tops, if it collects, it can become a breeding ground for fruit flies. I’m not saying you don’t clean, but if you have a common rag, maybe under the sink, even a flower pot may be responsible. They may even be coming from outside your home through an open window.
If you want to get rid of them, finding the source is a must. I know it can be tough to follow one of those little guys back to their home and thankfully there are other methods. Make sure you look around at the potential sources I’ve outlined above, it may be obvious. If not try taping a plastic bag over drain opening and other potential sources, after a couple hours if one of the bags is full of fruit flies, you have your source. If you just can’t find the source, try putting a few drops of cider vinegar in a jar, then roll up a piece of paper like a cone, put the cone in the jar and you’ve created a fruit fly trap. Now you can release the flies, kill them, or keep them as your new pets.
There is also the possibility that your fruit flies are not fruit flies at all. There is a very similar insect called the fungus gnat, which is regularly mistaken for the fruit fly, which breeds in over-dampened soil of indoor plants, and eats the fungus that grows in that type of environment. Fruit flies are brown and fat and the fungus gnat is skinny and either grey or black. To rid your home of fungus gnats, try to let the surface soil in your house plants dry completely before you water the plants again.