<p>We received a lovely fruit basket when we hosted our break-the-fast for Yom Kippur.</p>
<p>The next morning we came downstairs to a swarm of tiny fruit flies in our kitchen. </p>
<p>How do I get rid of them?</p>
<p>Get rid of the fruit. (Rinse it all off really well and put in fridge. Throw out any rotting or bruised pieces.) They’ll die very quickly (by tomorrow for sure). Darn though!</p>
<p>buy a venus fly trap…ours loves fruit flies.</p>
<p>seriously, I would not worry about them. Their presence is a sign the stuff you received is not overly doused in pesticides! Which would you rather have? Pristine fruit with no sign of life because it has all been killed off? Or little critters telling you the stuff is gooood…?</p>
<p>A little red wine next to the fruit will get rid of them.</p>
<p>I’ll try the red wine trick! I hate those little buggers!</p>
<p>I’m with the put-in-the-refrigerator trick. They disappear as quickly as they showed up in the first place. I still remember the fruitfly experiements we did in sophomore year of hs, where we each bred our own little fruit fly colonies…they multiply at astonishing speeds—purpose was a genetics lesson. The hs hallway had fruitflies everywhere!!!</p>
<p>astrophysicsmom,
That is nasty. Does anyone know if they eat jade plants? I have a beauty that has been dropping leaves at an alarming rate. I’ve tried spraying it but they are still dropping.</p>
<p>No, I don’t think they eat jade plants. I’ve killed a number of jade plants—it seems to me that they are pretty unforgiving to under- or over-watering, and once they decide to give up, there’s no turning them around. Maybe someone with a much greener thumb than I can give you tips. (maybe start a thread asking the question…I bet you’ll get a lot of responses).</p>
<p>I thought this was about the fruit fly experiment that all the AP Bio/freshman Bio lab classes do.</p>
<p>We had those tiny pill bottles full of fruit flies from October until Christmas. We even had to take them on our Thanksgiving trip with us, and DS sat in a hotel room, putting them to “sleep” and separating them into even more pill bottles according to sex and generation. Son wanted to take them up to New England with us over Winter Break, but alas, it could not be done.</p>
<p>With all the fruit flies we had escaping into our home over those few months, you would have thought we would be infested by now, but nary a fly in the house.</p>
<p>To eliminate fruit flies, I’ve had success this way:</p>
<p>Take a glass jar, remove the lid, clean it out. </p>
<p>Put in a big rotty old piece of fruit in the bottom (to attract them).</p>
<p>Take a piece of looseleaf paper and roll it into a cone shape, with the tiniest of points at the bottom, but wider than the jar top on top. Scotch tape it closed so it stays in that shape. </p>
<p>Place the cone into the jar, standing up with the pointy side going down alongside the fruit. Be sure as the cone stands in the jar, you can’t get any finger or anything between the paper cone and the side of the jar. A fairly tight seal, in other words. Tape it around the sides to the jar opening, so the only way a fly can enter the jar is through that tiny hole at the bottom of the cone.</p>
<p>What happens is: the fruit flies go down the cone and get just out that tiny pointy hole you left in the bottom. They hang around the fruit. The jar fills up with fruit flies in around 24 hours.</p>
<p>Being careful not to rock the cone, get that entire contraption into a plastic bag, seal it, and dispose in a larger green garbage bag. </p>
<p>I hate fruit flies. I could make a comment or two about the Sin of Giving Bad Fruit… but I’m guessing you love the friends or relatives who sent the stuff, so I won’t go there.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that happened, especially since it was for the break the fast. Anyway, we’ve had fruit flies in the past, because I left fresh fruit out on my kitchen counter, and we literally had to eradicate them ourselves - it was a family effort, and they tended to attach themselves to the kitchen cabinets, and since they were off-white (the cabinets), we were able to see them and just got rid of them one by one. It was a terrible nuisance, but we got the job done. Now I always put my fruit in the fridge - except bananas -I leave them out, and they’re fine.</p>
<p>I remember we had to anesthetize fruit flies in 7th grade. I must have underdosed them, because while I was looking at them in my microscope, they all woke up and walked off the slide. I just have a bad history with those things.</p>
<p>I agree with those who say they disappear as quickly as they appeared.
But what about those darn teeny tiny ants that have a trail all around our kitchen and through the cabinets? Grrrr. Obviously our food tastes way better than what’s in the ant traps…</p>
<p>sarahsmom: Read th label carefully on whatever you are spraying on your Jade plants. (It will begin with the word “Crassula.”) They are a frequent exception to sprays, and the sprays will kill them. You can probably use a mild horticultural soap, but that’s it.</p>
<p>BTW fruit flies don’t eat plants - they eat the yeast and alcohol-rich products of fermentation in ripe (or bruised, rotting, cracked) fruit.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the suggestions. I’m trying all of them simultaneously! I just want to be rid of the pests!</p>
<p>And for the sin which we have committed before thee by allowing rotten fruit to get past the screener… :D</p>
<p>Once you eliminate the breeding source, you’ll eliminate the flies. You won’t end up with some sort of infestation. Cut off and discard any over ripe or broken parts of the fruit and put the fruit in the fridge. That should do it. </p>
<p>With regard to the Jade plant - it’s probably a watering problem. They are very prone to over watering and prefer dry, sunny areas. It is best to water and let them dry out between waterings or water from beneath, but don’t leave them sitting in water for longer than a few hours. I had a jade that was so enormous in graduate school that my friends named it and were concerned that it would attack me. It thrived on benevolent neglect.</p>
<p>momof3sons,
you couldn’t have said it better. I’m trying to remember which of my many sins led to this consequence…</p>
<p>Here’s another capture-the-fruit-flies method. This is from an old-fashioned county extension agent–home economist. Get a tall, clear plastic bag (like a bread bag or large Ziploc bag) and put all the rotten fruit pieces in there plus peelings from any other fruit you have. As the fruit flies cluster in there, grab the bag at the top, seal it shut and toss. Keep repeating till fruit flies are gone.</p>