So you’ve got tons of clumsy little fruit flies buzzing around your house, eh? Well I’ve been there too so don’t worry, while it’s not always easy to get rid of the little buggers – it is possible and it can be quick too if you’re thorough. 3 Steps:.
Step 1: Identify the feeding and breeding grounds. Fruit flies will breed almost anywhere there is standing liquid or moist organic materials. They have been known to hide out in garbage disposals, trash cans, dishwashers, old forgotten sacks of potato’s, hidden beverage spills, and any type of fruit or vegetable that has been left out. It’s very important to locate every place that can support their larvae, if they can breed there, they will!
Step 2: Eliminate feeding and breeding grounds. Clean it up, get it out! Clean drains by pouring 1 cup of ammonia down them and letting it sit, repeat as necessary. Throw out old sponges, search your cabinets for potatoes and toss those black bananas! Clean your trash cans, look under and behind furniture – especially your fridge! Use your nose to sniff out rotten smells. Look at all those sneaker smudges! When was the last time you washed your floor?? 
Also note that it is possible they are coming in from the outdoors, so make sure there are no openings around your doors and windows.
Step 3: Eradicate. Once their spawning grounds are gone, you can choose to wait out the death of the adults or you can kill them with insecticides and traps. Find these at your local hardware store or make them yourself.
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{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
I have fruit flies in my basil plants. how can i kill them and keep the plants intact?
We have loads of teeny itty bitty flies in our basement and they seem to be congregating around the drain. They are too small to even tell what kind they are but I have poured bleach in the drain twice and it hasn’t helped. Does it seem as though this is the type of fly I am dealing with? I brought my clothes basket upstairs and they were on the bottom of it so I transferred some to my bedroom, uuuugggg. Got those vaccumed but I feel itchy, lol Any help appreciated.
Lana
Lana, your flies are probably either fruit flies or drain flies (also known as moth flies). In either case, you want to make sure they aren’t breeding in your drains as this is a common breeding ground for both. Bleach will not do the job. You need something that will eliminate the organic material from the drain. Try a drain cleaner like Solutions Drain Cleaner.
By far the best homemade trap I have used for this pesky problem is the vinegar trap. Simply fill a shallow disposable dish with some Apple Cider Vinegar, add a drop of liquid dish detergent to break the surface tension, and leave it sitting out where ever you see the most fruit flies. They will immediately start landing in the vinegar and drowning. You can leave it out for at least two days and usually catch all of those annoying flies!
I have a problem with fruit flies, I have been leaving pieces of tomatoes out. they seem to like that but, it doesn’t kill them. Can I add something else to it to kill them?
I was so happy to see the someone else had those pesky little bugs in basil plants, what can I do??
You could try placing a bowl of apple cider vinegar with a couple drops of dish soap mixed in as described in the comment above. That makes a good homemade trap or you can try a trap like food establishments use here: http://www.fruitflysolutions.com/solutions-fruit-fly-trap.html
I can’t seem to find their breeding ground. They are sparsely spread out through the entire apartment and don’t seem to congregate anywhere so I am having a very difficult time getting rid of them. I have been keeping the kitchen very clean leaving no food products or mess around and they are still in my apartment!
Often times, fruit flies breed in the organic matter found in drains. Check all your sink, shower and bathtub drains. Don’t forget about floor drains such as those found under washing machines. Get a good drain cleaner that is designed to break down organic matter. Do not use bleach, it won’t work. Also, if you are in an apartment complex, it’s possible that the source of the problem might be in an adjacent unit.
Has anyone found a good way to eliminate the flies without killing plants?
Flea spray will kill them and not your plants.
We have a fruit fly infestation but they are not regular fruit flies. They’re not even attacking the fruit. They’re obsessed with the sink/dirty dishes and NEW food. I have poured a drink into a cup and they fly into the cup. I set a pan on the stove with boiling milk they flew into it. We have left “Fruit Fly Traps” out in the same places they are flying and they don’t even touch it.
Obvious answer is to clean the sink, dirty dishes and drains – WE DID. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
We’ve poured draino and other chemicals down all the drains. We’ve cleaned everything we can think of. There is no “moist” soil around. We don’t have stale water anywhere… the only water left out is the dog’s water bowl and they are NOT in there. They crawl all over the cupboards and hang out there. We have put tape over the drains and then went on a spray and killing spree to try and confirm that IS the source of them but there’s still a few flying around hours later… so where the heck elsewhere could they be hiding! They are only in the kitchen.
Really.. we just can’t figure it out, cleaned like crazy and the whole thing makes no sense. The only thing we’re sure of is they are obsessed with the kitchen sink!
I’m going to try Bio-Gel and see what happens.
I can’t stand it anymore.
I got fruit flies in and on my cabinet. When i set some traps they wont die what should i do?
I have so many friut flies im gonna start charging them rent
i have fruit flies in my kitchen i have cleaned the the hole kitchen 2 and still cant get rid of them could moisture cause this
I cannot get rid of the flies I have cleaned my kitchen, cupboards, burnt incense, insect candles you name it. I live in a flat (apartment) a building with a lot of people. Please help I am desperate
I have fruit flies hanging around my windows and around my bedroom night light I spray them and spray but not hope, I don’t have fruit or water laying around ,help.
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I can’t have bananas in the house without having fruit flies too! Help!
How do they start? Where do they come from?
One fantastic way to get rid of them is to put a bit of red wine vinegar in a small container, cover it with clear plastic wrap and then poke a few small holes in it. A toothpick is the perfect size. Set in on the counter and wait a day or so, the flies will get in but can’t find a way out.
fruit flies have been swarming my house. i see them in the bathrooms, in my room, and of course, mostly in the kitchen. they’re driving me crazy. what’s an easy way to get rid of them all? thanks.
My fruit flies originate in my compost bin out in the yard. This is the 2nd year I’ve had them. Some eventually make their way into the house. I keep my fly swatter handy, but the little devils are hard to swat, although I luck out once in a while. I tried plain vinegar in a dish a couple of times, with no luck. This time I’ll try apple cider vinegar with dish soap. Hopefully that will work. I’m wondering, though, about putting the vinegar and soap out near the compost bin also, whether it will draw them out of the bin and into the container. Guess it’s worth a try.
I found a good way to get rid of fruit flies is to put any type of vinegar you can find, (most preferably red wine or apple) and combine it with dish soap, or regular and windex, or your standard cleaner, and when the flies land for a tasty lick, it poisons them and they die in the bowl.
One thing that works very good in capturing the fruit flies is wine! I leave about two ounces of white wine in a wine bottle. I’ve tried pouring a little wine into a small cup or a small dish and it doesn’t work, but the bottle does. Works great in the kitchen, put the bottle near the sink or leave on the counter.
These things are driving me nuts!! I cleaned out all the food and fruit off my counters. I am going to try some of the suggestions on your site. I’ll let you know.
I stand in the kitchen with a 12″ pie tin; then I tap the counter. The flies fly up in a large cluster, then I swing the pie tin through the mass of them. You can actually hear the pinging of the small fly bodies bouncing off the pie tin; it’s almost musical. I would say that about 50% of all flies are dead on impact, while the rest are crippled, or left quite retarded.
Mostly I just spray the little buggers when they plume in flight over my sink with Pam. They can’t fly with the oil on their wings!
Val Boys; If you have many little black flies in a room other than the kitchen, and you have plants in that particular room, you may have fungus gnats. They live in house plant soil. They look a lot like fruit flies, but are an entirely different bug. They live on “over watered” plants, eating the roots. These can be killed with less watering and an application of bacillus.
I have found a night light left on all day & night with a bowl under the light with dish soap & water helps. This also helps with fleas as well as fruit flies,
Put some vinegar and a split cherry tomato in the bottom of a plastic coke bottle. Cut the top of the bottle off and flip it upside down and put it back in and seal it with tape. This way the flies make their way down into the bottle, but are too stupid to figure out get back out. I’ll try some dish soap to poison them…right now I just harvest them and take them outside haha.
I’ve tried some of these. The vinegar didn’t work very well. What worked the best as a trap was coffee with nondairy creamer and Splenda. If you happen to have a coffee cup with a narrow brim that helps. Fill the cup about 1/4 full, load in the creamer and three to four packets of Splenda, stir until blended. Leave in the area you have them. In about 24 hours you have caught a TON.
But absolutely the first thing to do is find the source, get rid of that, keep the kitchen and bathroom clean, clean, clean.
ive just moved into an apartment complex october 1st of this year and in the process of me coming to look at the place i did see one fly but when i finally moved all my things into the apartment i started seeing lots of fruit flies in the whole apartment, not just in one room or place, so i went out to home depot and purchased 4 packs of fly catchers with 4 in a pack. i hung 2 of those things in every room including the kitchen and after two days, its tons of those things dead on the catcher in every room, but they are coming from some where i just dont know where, im bout ready to curse this dam lanlord out because she gone try and say that it came from my deep freezer and im like bitch what???…i just moved here….. bull shit……..i went down in the basement of the apartment complex and there is moisture all down there, like water running down the walls on both sides of the basement when it rains. so now what, i have a lanlord over exaggerating the fact of her knowing that those dam flies been flying around in this complex.
as a matter of fact i had to get up from the computer and go wash my hands because i just clapped one while i was typing my first comment…lol dam shame, what do i do, can someone please help me on how to get rid of these things for good, and i also like to know do they lie eggs for bed bugs or dust mites, and by the way i am a clean person with nice house, and nice things, but this is beginning to be irritating when i eat cook or whateva, i mean they fly in ya food so quick… dam
It has been about 4 days since the onset of my fruitflies. No matter what i have tried, the problem seems to get worse and worse. Although they are starting to die down now. Although you can make traps, i have found that the store bought traps work much much better. they are about 5.00 per trap and I have caught 3 times the amt of fruit flies as i have with the vinegar trap. also fly paper hung above the trap works nicely too.
A NEAT WAY TO CATCH FLIES THAT WORKS IS TO PUT A SMALL AMOUNT OF FRUIT (I USE BANANAS) IN A A SMALL NECKED JAR. ADD A LITTLE POWERED YEAST AND PUT A FUNNEL IN THE TOP WITH PAPER TOWEL AROUND THE EDGE. THE FLIES GO IN BUT CAN’T FIND THE SMALL FUNNEL END TO ESCAPE. ITS INEXPENSIVE AND WHEN SOME FLIES ARE IN FILL THE JAR WITH HOT WATER FROM THE SINK FAUCET.
The fruit flies were taking over . The jars with red wine vinegar helps. When they gather on the jar , I have a hand vacumn and it sucks them in and they can’t get out .
we also have fruit flys, tryed the apple vinagur trap.what happend they all just injoyed seating around the out side rim of the glass injoying the smell,never trying to go inside.
One way that I like to get rid of them is cleaning my entire kitchen (just so they dont have food/breeding grounds) and then I put out an apple or another kind of fruit. i rap a fly strip around the piece of fruit and just wait.. Come back after a few hours and it will be infested. Some will be stuck to the paper and some will not.. I ususally take some bug spray to the peice of fruit while they are all on it then pitch it and start over again!
I have found fruit flies around my ceramic bath tub. I think they are in the drain. I do have one side if my padio covered with honey suckel ,but I have had it for 5 years an this is the only year I’ve seen fruit flies. Going to try the vinegar in the drain. Thanks Hope it works.