How to Make a Fruit Fly Trap - CHOW Tip

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Summer fruit is amazing. Summer fruit flies are annoying. In this quick and easy CHOW Tip, CHOW.com's Roxanne Webber shares how to make a great homemade fly trap that won't fill your house with harmful chemicals.

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TRANSCRIPT
Fruit is one of the best parts about summer but with it comes a nasty little pest. Fruit flies. Fortunately, it's easy to get rid of them by making a simple trap with stuff you already have around the house: paper, tape, a jar, and a little something to bait the trap with. It's cheap and it doesn't spread insecticides all over your house. First take a sheet of paper, roll it into a funnel shape and tape it. Then get a jar or a tall glass and throw a piece of banana or a little bit of apple cider vinegar in the bottom of it. Put your funnel into the jar so that bottom is just above your bait. Then tape it around the edge and wait. The fruit or vinegar will attract the flies and the funnel makes it hard for them to get back out of the jar once they get in. If you want to get really sciencey, try baiting the trap with a little yeast, sugar, and water because the flies are attracted to the carbon dioxide it'll produce.

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Pro-Tip: Fruit flies are NOT attracted to the smell of fresh fruit or the smell of sugar (which doesn't have much of an odor). Fruit flies are attracted to decaying fruit that is being fermented by YEAST (yeast = microorganisms that naturally live on fruit, as well as many other places). What fruit flies are mostly interested in eating is the yeast, not the fruit itself, because the yeast has necessary nutrients for their survival. As such, baiting your trap with fresh fruit typically won't work, unless you wait a few days for the fruit to sit in the trap and rot. If you don't have rotting fruit, you can add some powdered baker's yeast (along with some water + sugar for the yeast to eat) to the trap. Small amounts of vinegar (diluted with water) or beer/wine will also attract them, since in nature, yeast fermentation converts fruit sugars into alcohol (ethanol), and then bacteria convert the alcohol into vinegar when oxygen is present — so fruit flies recognize the smell of alcohol and/or vinegar as indicators that decaying fruit with yeast is nearby. (While beer or wine will work —just a splash of it —do not use rubbing alcohol, which will repel the flies away from your trap.) In my experience, adding Dawn dish soap does NOT work well —I find that the traps with Dawn don't catch any flies, even when using just one small drop of Dawn in mixtures of water/vinegar/yeast. I have assumed that it's the fragrance of the soap that repels them (I've mostly tried the original blue Dawn). Perhaps a fruit-scented dish soap (lemon, green apple, etc.) would work better than the blue version. Finally: The video says fruit flies are attracted to the CO2 that yeast generate — but they are actually attracted to aromatic fruit esters produced by the yeast, not by carbon dioxide. Mutant yeast that are unable to produce those fruit esters fail to attract fruit flies, despite producing CO2.

jeffreardon

Pro tip: if you use apple cider vinegar, the flies won't just get caught in the trap, they'll drown. And to ensure that they drown (rather than just sitting at the margins of the vinegar, getting drunk), mix a few drops of dish soap into the vinegar; that breaks the surface tension and once they touch the liquid, they drown.

bricology

Thank you. Fast & straight forward video...

Other channel vids just kept talking crap.

harmlesscarrot

flies are attracted to carbon dioxide?
is that why they keep flying into my mouth and nostrils?

inuyashaspet

Vinegar with some sudsy water on top works like a charm. I've watched 100s get trapped in the suds trying to get to the vinegar.

GalloPazzesco

Doing this for my mantis nymph. Trying to catch them by hand was a nightmare, and they refuse to eat dead ones. Thank you!

ghost-fsth

Great tip on the fruit flies. Me n my brother were getting pissed. They came out of nowhere. I was making the cone things and while I was making the second one the first one was already working. Thank you for saving us a bunch of money on spray.

williamrunyon

Don't you need dish soap too? I don't have apple cider vinegar, but I have tried it (and dish soap) in a past and it never seemed to catch them. Also tried a piece of plastic wrap with holes punched in the top. No luck. I have better luck smacking them when they land somewhere, but that gets exhausting.

wxclim

Fast and straight to the point, love it. Also bonus points for the Amon Amarth shirt lol

Zedigan

That yeast trick worked perfectly!! Thank you for the tip.

jonathanduncan

Luv it fast & straight to the point.

marcnangelu

For the second version, add a touch of mild dish soap. This will break the surface tension in the water, and as the fruit flies touch the water, they will sink immediately.

efransophoto

This is the best trap yet. I highly recommend doing it.

laidbackblack

I make a trap identical to yours, but I tape some small weights ( I use small steel bolts) to both sides of the funnel. That maintains a tight seal where the cone touches the jar, and you don't have to tape it to the jar. When I get several flies in the trap, I take the jar outside, lift the cone, and the flies take off. Put the cone back in the jar, and you are ready to go again.

mikedunn

I never had luck with these traps...the lil' fuggers always land on the funnel, but don't go inside. Oh, and she left a part out: If you're using vinegar, put one drop of dish soap in it, it breaks the water tension so the flies drown when they try to get a drink!

WobblesandBean