You may not think that Fruit Flies pose a health risk but they are insects and all insects pose a health risk if they hang around long enough. Fruit Flies generally hang around because there is food lying around. Fruit Flies have a life cycle of about 10 days and it doesn’t seem like much time to do any damage but they can.

Fruit flies like regular flies breed bacteria. Anything they hang around long enough is going to become infected. For example, if you are having a party and you leave an open bowl of chips on a table outside, the fruit flies are going to come. As they land on the chips they are leaving behind bacteria and who knows what else. That is why it is important that when you have an event outdoors that the food is kept sealed until you are ready to eat it.

In addition to leaving open bowls of food out, fruit flies are attracted to garbage cans. Have you ever gone to throw your trash in the outside bins and you open the cover and there are what seems like hundreds of flies. They breed around garbage. The problem with that is when they are done with the garbage they could get into your home and infest your food.

The health risk involved is that you can get really sick. There have been severe cases of sickness from fruit flies but there are no life threatening cases as far as we know of. The idea is to keep food covered at all times, not just outside but inside your home as well. Summertime is a holiday for Fruit Flies; they can fit through screens or fly in when you have the door open.

Never leave plates of leftover food left out; it only takes a matter of seconds for the flies to find it. If you see a plate of food with a lot of fruit flies around it, don’t eat it. The germs and bacteria are microscopic so you won’t be able to see anything. To avoid getting yourself sick and others follow the safety precautions.

Try to drink your drink in a timely fashion, sweet drinks like soda, milkshakes and even teas with sugar are magnets. Make sure that you throw out your kitchen garbage and any other garbage cans you may have in the house, every night. Keep your outside garbage cans lids on tightly. Never spray bug spray near food, it may keep away the flies but you can get sick from the spray.