The fruit fly is a small, harmless insect, but it is always unpleasant to find one in the house. She is attracted by the smell of spoiled fruits and nectar in the flowers of indoor plants. In the warm season, Drosophila can fly into a living room from the street if you simply spray an air freshener with a berry or fruit scent in the room. How to get rid of fruit flies in an apartment? What products should you use?
Where do fruit flies come from in the house?
There are several ways for a fly to enter an apartment:
- The insect chooses soft, slightly or severely spoiled fruits as a place for laying eggs, since their peel is easier to bite through. Since both the fly itself and its eggs are small in size, it is almost impossible to notice that a vegetable or fruit is infected.
- Fly larvae and eggs can appear in the house along with soil for indoor plants.
- Open windows without mosquito nets or open doors are another way for an insect to get into the apartment. Midges fly to the smell of fruits, indoor flowers or spoiled food.
Prevention
To prevent unwanted neighbors from appearing again, you should follow some simple recommendations. First of all, maintain order.
- All products must be closed: this especially applies to fruits, berries and cut fruits. Cover them or refrigerate them to prevent rotting.
- The same applies to drinks: do not leave juice, lemonade, tea, beer or wine in glasses or open bottles.
- Dispose of trash promptly, especially if you throw food waste into the bin.
- Do not accumulate dirty dishes in the sink: dishes left overnight may already become the object of attention of food flies in the morning.
- Periodically check for pests and larvae in cereals, pasta, nuts and dried fruits. Throw out the infected mercilessly. To prevent voracious bugs from getting into your supplies, store them in airtight containers or jars.
- Maintain general cleanliness: Wash all surfaces thoroughly, remembering to look behind cabinets and appliances for dirt.
- Systematically clean the drain with special formulas or folk compositions.
As for indoor plants, they should also be properly cared for. Avoid overwatering. If you use tea leaves or other fertilizers, remove them promptly to prevent rotting.
In general, if there is a persistent problem, replace the topsoil before the sciarids colonize it. You can also sprinkle the soil with small pebbles or sand. This not only looks beautiful, but also protects against the dominance of insects.
The midge has a negative attitude towards the specific smell of geranium and avoids it, therefore, standing on the windowsill, it repels pests.
To avoid unwanted residents from the street or neighbors, install mosquito nets on windows and ventilation.
Where to look for fruit fly larvae in an apartment?
To get rid of these small insects, it is not enough to simply destroy the adult individuals - fruit flies reproduce actively, the female is capable of laying about 20 eggs at a time, and in 2 months (this is the lifespan of an adult insect) she can produce up to 2000 eggs. Insects hatch in the early morning, and already 8 hours after this, the female is ready to reproduce. If you do not start fighting Drosophila in time, it will easily fill the entire house.
The most common habitats of midges:
- A trash can or a bowl of food for a pet is where optimal conditions are created for the laying of eggs and the accumulation of adult insects, because there is no shortage of food in such a place.
- Pots with indoor flowers. Wet soil and fallen leaves that are beginning to rot are also attractive to insects.
- Storage areas for vegetables and fruits. If there are several fruits in a container, one of them may begin to deteriorate before the others, and flies will definitely smell it.
Special preparations for getting rid of small midges
Many people are interested in a logical question: why not use special chemicals to get rid of small midges? Different chemicals are available in a wide range and are suitable for quickly solving this situation.
However, such a smell may not please household members. People will have to leave the premises for a while so that the acrid smell disappears from the apartment.
When using chemicals, you need to go to every corner of the house. Repellents are not recommended for use on plants, as they may die.
How to deal with fruit fly?
Having noticed the appearance of uninvited guests in the house, you need to carefully inspect the apartment and find all the spoiled food: fruit forgotten on the table, sour leftover food in the trash can, pet food in a bowl that has spoiled in the heat. If tea leaves are used as a fertilizer for indoor flowers, you also need to inspect the pots with soil.
All detected possible sources of Drosophila must be disposed of immediately by sending them to the trash. Containers for storing fruits and vegetables should be thoroughly washed to remove larvae and eggs invisible to the eye from the surfaces.
Flowers need to be transplanted into pots with fresh soil. If some of the leaves or flowers of the plant begin to rot, they are removed. The indoor plants themselves are watered often, but little by little - waterlogged soil attracts midges.
Traditional methods
To clear your apartment of midges, you can build your own traps:
- Since one of the Drosophila's favorite treats is banana, it can be used as bait. Peel the fruit and place it in a plastic bag or plastic bottle. Using a toothpick, make several holes in polyethylene or plastic. Leave the trap near the midge habitat. Over the next 2 days, a significant portion of the midges will fly inside, but they will not be able to get out.
- Just as much as bananas, the fruit fly Drosophila loves honey, fruit juice or apple cider vinegar. The trap is made like this: take a deep container, pour one of the listed liquids into it, and cover it with a bag or cling film. Make holes with a toothpick. Insects attracted by the smell will climb into the trap.
- Another possible option is to use a glass jar. A piece of banana, orange or any spoiled fruit is placed at the bottom. A cone is made from a sheet of paper with a small hole at the top. Turning it over, insert the blank into the neck of the bottle. The midges will easily get inside the jar, but they will not be able to fly back out.
- Beer, water diluted with sugar and yeast are poured into a disposable glass and left close to the accumulation of insects. Hearing a tempting smell, the midges will fly towards it and drown.
In addition to traps, you can use other means.
Smoking
The crushed hard camphor is placed in an old frying pan (one that you don’t mind throwing away) and put on fire. As soon as the frying pan is hot and steam starts to flow, the container is carried throughout all rooms of the apartment. The resulting smoke is not dangerous for humans, but midges will not tolerate it.
Poison for midges
A couple of recipes for poisonous treats for insects:
- ½ cup of milk is mixed with 40 g of sugar and the same amount of ground black pepper. Soak a paper napkin or a piece of toilet paper in the liquid and place it on a plate next to the midges. After a while there will be no insects left.
- 10 g of honey is combined with 1 g of saccharin, and a napkin is moistened with this mixture. Place it on the windowsill.
Vacuum cleaner
The place where midges have accumulated is treated with a vacuum cleaner. A running unit will draw in insects, trapping them in a dust bag. The container must be emptied outside the apartment.
Cold
Drosophila are very sensitive to temperature; hypothermia is detrimental to them. If they attacked the apartment in winter, it is enough to simply leave the window in the kitchen open when leaving the house. After a few hours, all the flies will die.
This way you can destroy adult insects, but if there are larvae left somewhere, then after a while the insects will appear again. To prevent this from happening, it is recommended to thoroughly wash the pet’s trash can and bowl, and water the soil in flower pots with a manganese solution.
Potassium permanganate or matches
This method is suitable if there are flies on the plant. Prepare a weak solution of manganese and treat flowers with it twice a month.
You can also use regular matches: stick them head down into the ground in the pot. The sulfur from the match will destroy the larvae.
Geranium
Fruit flies cannot tolerate the smell of geraniums. If there are midges in the kitchen, you need to get rid of the spoiled fruit and place a pot with this plant on the windowsill of the room.
Garlic
Midges do not like the smell of garlic, so placing the crushed head near the Drosophila habitat helps. After a few hours there will be no insects.
Orange and clove
A stick of spice is stuck into the orange peel and placed next to the place where midges gather.
Store products
How to get rid of fruit flies if you don’t have time to bother with building traps or preparing poisonous compounds? You can use ready-made traps or preparations.
Manufacturers offer a choice of:
- Repellents. Tapes impregnated with chemical compounds, from which vapors that poison insects emanate. Such products cannot be called completely safe for humans - the room in which the tape is located must be ventilated.
- Sprays. Special liquids containing fatty acids, falling on larvae and insects, destroy them. They are not dangerous to humans.
- Zappers. Modern devices that affect insects with electricity. The only drawback of some models is their high power consumption.
- Traps. Factory-made traps do not contain poison; most of them use a substance that attracts insects, and the midge that flies into the trap dies of hunger, unable to get out. You can even install such devices in the kitchen without fear that they will harm a person or animal.
How to get rid of small midges in the kitchen
As a rule, small midges, being in a room where there are no living plants, become increasingly annoying to people. They begin to fly around the apartment, landing on your arms, on your head, on your shoulders.
The reason for this is the products that are in the public domain. It is recommended to exclude attractive objects for the existence of midges from being in the apartment.
The following cleaning needs to be done:
- Remove all food from the table. Wash the table surface;
- Throw away or disinfect all napkins, rags, and containers for storing dishes. Rinse all pots and cups;
- Clean the siphon and sink. Start cleaning the pipes in the room and wash the shelves in the closets.
After the cleaning is done, small midges will still remain in the kitchen. To do this, you need to use repellent scents. You can buy eucalyptus, basil or clove extract.
Add a few drops of strong aroma to a small container of water, put the liquid on the fire and bring to a boil. Such a pungent smell will scare away small midges forever. However, it is worth considering that the appearance of new products on the table can lead to the emergence of new insects.
After completing all the procedures, you need to ventilate the room and do a wet cleaning. It is possible that unpleasant insects can appear not only in the kitchen, but also in the bathroom.
It is important to keep wet areas clean, regularly ventilate rooms, provide ventilation and regularly clean pipes.
Preventive measures
It’s not difficult to prevent the appearance of fruit flies in your apartment; all you need to do is:
- keep clean;
- regularly (at least once a day) take out the bucket;
- wash dishes immediately after a meal;
- Throw away spoiled fruits immediately;
- Do not leave food in your pet’s bowl for a long time, remove it as soon as the animal eats.
If the midges have nothing to eat, they will not appear in the apartment.
Even if midges have infested your apartment, you should not immediately rush to the store for chemicals - you can get rid of them using traditional methods, without the use of toxic substances.
What harm does
These tiny insects do not carry dangerous infections, and they cannot bite. The human body can receive harm from them through eating fruit affected by larvae in the form of indigestion. They annoy people with their large numbers and intrusiveness, creating discomfort. Flies cause more damage to fruit and vegetable crops. Therefore, you need to be able to cope with these insects.
