Healthy and Green Living

Ok, here is what I do for common fruit flies: put cider vinegar 1/2 inch deep in a bowl or plastic container with two drops of dishwashing liquid added. Leave it sit, uncovered near your fruit and they will dive in and drown. I empty and refresh once a day.

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i tried the bag of water, the only time it worked was when the sun was shining in my back yard, before the sun got there forget it, my daughter was told to use a piece of foil.

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Van, more than likely what you are being bothered with is Phorid Flies. Fruit Flies seldom become an indoors nuisance. A very simple way to distinguish between Phorid flies Fruit Flies is to disturb them. Phorid flies will seldom take flight but will scurry away, and return very quickly. Fruit flies will always take flight

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Van, usually those "fruit" fly type flies that are a nuisance indoors ound fruit are Phorid flies. Easy to distinguish from Fruit flies as they will scurry away when disturbed, rather than fly away.

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The bag of water with a penny in it works!! I tested it this weekend.

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Half-fill a zipper-style plastic bag or water bottle with water and suspend it on string in a doorway or window. I hang one from the ceiling fan, too. I don't know why, but flies go to lengths to avoid them. Do freshen the water at least once a week. Putting a penny in the water may increase your success.

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To repel regular flies, burning incense around the deck has helped us.

For fruit flies, you can make a simple, non toxic trap by taking a jar or vase with a long, narrow neck and opening and placing a small amount of water and a small piece of overly ripe fruit in the vase. This is an attractant. Then make a paper funnel that tapers quite a bit at the end and insert into the vase opening. The flies are attracted to the smell of the fruit, and fly in and get stuck in the vase, as they cannot get out of the funnel again. The funnel must taper to a fairly small point for this to work. We found banana seems to attract the most flies. The flies may breed in the vase if you don't empty it daily. First, flood the vase with very hot water to quickly kill the flies, then dump outside away from your house or in the toilet. Hope this helps!

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We do have an occasional common house fly get into the house and usually dispatch them with a swatter. However we do have infestations of what we thought were fruit flies. On reading some descriptions on the internet, we are not sure they are fruit flies. They act like fruit flies in that they like the fruit bowl, particularly peaches. We've tried removing things that the like for several days but they seem to come back quickly when we place some fruit back in the bowl. We don't have the micro/macro equipment to examine them closely. We will be trying some of the trapping methods described on some of the internet web sites to see if that works. In the meantime, does anyone have any other suggestions?

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