Bottle trap gets rid of relentless fruit flies
I have absolutely no idea where fruit flies come from or why they plague my apartment on a regular basis in the summer, but I’ve finally found an easy and inexpensive way to get rid of them.
The Pinterest post I found said to fill an empty water bottle halfway with apple cider vinegar, add in a couple squirts of honey and about half that amount of dish soap. The post said not to shake up the mixture because there would be too much foam.
The first time I tried the mixture I followed the instructions and didn’t shake it up. Every time I would walk in my kitchen I would scare away a couple flies that were sitting on the edge of the bottle, but there didn’t seem to be any inside. When I got up the next morning the bottle did have a decent amount of the nasty little flies floating in the bottom. Even though there weren’t a ton of flies in my trap, the effort seemed to get rid of them for a couple days.
Then I went grocery shopping and must have brought some more home from the grocery store. So I pulled out another bottle, filled it up with the ingredients, and this time I purposely got some honey on the inside of the bottle, and shook up the mixture a little bit. The resulting bubbles proved to be helpful because the fruit flies that just flew part of the way into the bottle seemed to get stuck in the maze of bubbles and couldn’t get out. Plus, the honey on the side of the bottle seemed to attract more flies sooner. With the same mixture, but with my two adjustments, I seemed to catch twice the amount of fruit flies. It is three days later and I haven’t seen another one.
Pinterest do or don’t? I definitely plan to use this bottle trap again if I find those pesky little black flies in my kitchen. Hopefully the suggestions I’ve listed below will prevent them from taking over, but if they do come back I know how to get rid of them overnight!
NOTES: A suggestion I’ve heard for getting rid of fruit flies is to keep all produce in the refrigerator, but you can’t really do that with bananas. I read online that most fruit flies come on the stems of bananas and that you’re supposed to dip a paper towel in vinegar and use it to wipe off your bananas. Apparently that’s supposed to prevent any eggs or bugs that traveled home on your bananas from infesting your home. Do you have any tips for getting rid of these pesky summer bugs?
–Hannah
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