How to Kill Fruit Flies and Their Counterparts
Warmer weather means an early fruit season is just around the corner, which unfortunately also means fruit flies are just around the corner. But before using apple cider vinegar and dish soap or vermouth, make sure you are really dealing with fruit flies and not an impostor.
The four main types of flying pests you are likely to encounter in your home are fruit flies, mushroom flies, forid flies, and drainage flies. Knowing exactly what kinds of flies or mosquitoes have settled near you is very important because that tells you what kind of trash they are eating and laying eggs. Hut, you can use baited traps to catch and kill adults.
While these insects look quite similar when flying through the air, their physical differences are obvious up close. Your first task is to catch the fly without crushing it completely, so that you understand what you are dealing with. Here are the distinguishing features and preferred breeding grounds for each type.
Fruit flies: brown with huge characteristic red eyes.
Obviously, fruit flies love fruits, so if your kitchen is suddenly overrun with them, chances are good that you have a rotting orange at the bottom of your fruit bowl or something. Find it, throw it away, empty the bowl and you’re done. Pretty much all DIY fruit fly traps work great, so pick one that has the ingredients and shake.
If your traps are full of dead flies but the infestation is not improving, then you either missed a piece of rotting fruit or you are not dealing with fruit flies at all.
Mushroom gnats: black, with long legs and tiny heads.
It is very easy to mistake fungal mosquitoes for fruit flies. Because they thrive in moist soil, waterlogged houseplants are the most common culprits. If you get into the habit of letting the top few inches of soil dry completely between waterings, the problem will eventually go away on its own.
However, this may not work fast enough for people who have a lot of plants. To fix the problem right away, try removing the top 2-3 inches of soil and replacing it with fresh, dry soil. If the problem persists, the Old Farmer’s Almanac recommends using mosquito infusions , which are beneficial bacteria that kill larvae (and are completely harmless to humans and pets).
Correct identification of midges is a difficult task; killing adults is not a problem. They don’t dissolve as well in apple cider vinegar as fruit flies, so homemade or store-made sticky traps may be more effective.
Forid flies: Tan with black spots, large black eyes and a “humped” rib cage.
Wow, this is disgusting. Forid flies are also called humpback flies (because of their characteristic “hunchback” chest shape), runaway flies (because they tend to run on the surface rather than fly around) or sewer flies (for reasons that are not surprising) … According to the University of Pennsylvania Expansion, these flies love rotting potatoes and onions as well as sewage, usually laying their eggs in a film that covers pipes. Their larvae are very difficult to kill, so if a group of these guys suddenly starts crawling around your sink or kitchen counter and you don’t have a bag of rotten tubers, call a pest control specialist right away. (Call a plumber while you are doing this; forid flies can indicate damage to a sewer pipe in or near your home.)
Drain flies: Mostly just moths.
I don’t think anyone has ever mistook a drainage fly for a fruit fly, but you should still know how to deal with them. Like forid flies, drain flies lay their eggs in pipes; unlike forid flies, you can safely deal with the infestation on your own . Bob Veel has a detailed guide to identifying and removing a drain fly infestation on his website. Basic steps: glue the gutters overnight to see which ones are catching flies, then wrap the affected pipes, clean out the U-traps, and finish off with an enzymatic cleaner to kill the larvae.
The good news is that, with the exception of forid flies, none of these pests are harmful to humans. (Forid flies don’t bite, but their love of untreated wastewater means they can theoretically spread disease-causing bacteria to food or surfaces — this is rare, but not impossible.) Once the first waves of disgust and disgust are over, it will take a few minutes. find out what you are dealing with and get started.