Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) have infested my house! WTF?

[DemoTex]

I have looked all over for a source of food. Notta. The garbage is food-free. No fruit, vegetables, or flowers in the house. No potted plants. I have to put a paper napkin over my wine glass to keep from getting an O/D of Drosophila protein. My dad is a retired entomology professor, but it is past his bedtime. Any ideas?

[Lefta Dissenter]

1. That's hilarious

I, also, have a napkin over my glass of wine (red is the worst) and my dad is a retired professor of entomology and arachnology! :hi:

I keep my fruit in the microwave, which helps the fruitfly problem in the kitchen, but DAMN, they're just digging to get at my wine here in my office! :(

[DemoTex]

5. Well, it is Shiraz!

Small world, eh? I had a neighbor in Dallas whose dad was an entomology professor with mine at the University of Georgia.

[masshole]

2. wake him

;-)

[DemoTex]

6. Uh, naw. The lion sleeps tonight.

.

[Philostopher]

3. Are you sure they're fruit flies?

I ask because we had an attack of what we thought were fruit flies a couple of summers ago, and found out they were drain flies. They propagate in uncovered drains, like you have in the laundry room, and they do behave a lot like fruit flies, but they're smaller and completely black. We covered the open drains in our basement and the flies were gone in a couple of days.

We get fruit flies, too, when we don't close the lid completely on the compost bin, but other than fruit leavings in the garbage disposal, I can't think of any other place they'd live.

[DemoTex]

11. No I'm not sure, and that is a good point.

They could be fungus flies, too. I have fruit trees in the yard with fruit (apples) on the ground, but I think they are too far away for the flies to be in the house (besides, the food is there, not here). We don't have a compost pile because of the bears (I need to get a bear-proof compost bin).

Damn, this reminds me of genetics lab in 1966! Wish I had known about the attraction of fruit flies to red wine back then.

[unblock]

4. give them a better food source. wait 30 minutes. then ATTACK with raid!

[havocmom]

10. Laughing here cuz I sorta did that with some pesky bees. No Raid though.

They were buzzing me early last spring and seemed determined to ruin my afternoon in the garden. I poured out some Margarita mix (no cactus juice) into a saucer for them and told them to let me get my seeds in the ground or there wouldn't be any nectar all summer.

They like Margarita mix.

We did have a bunch of drunk flies when the hubby dropped a Margarita complete with cactus juice. Now, that was funny. They couldn't get more than 5 inches off the ground and kept crashing into each other.

[unblock]

13. lol! drunk flies! finally a good use for booze!

[Nikia]

7. They multiply rapidly

They could have come in on something days ago. Always be sure to carefully inspect fresh produce before bringing it home. We've had a few before. Our dog likes to kill and eat even the smallest bugs so they don't stay around for long.

[DemoTex]

15. Life cycle of Drosophila

The drosophila egg is about half a millimeter long. It takes about one day after fertilisation for the embryo to develop and hatch into a worm-like larva. The larva eats and grows continuously, moulting one day, two days, and four days after hatching (first, second and third instars). After two days as a third instar larva, it moults one more time to form an immobile pupa. Over the next four days, the body is completely remodelled to give the adult winged form, which then hatches from the pupal case and is fertile within about 12 hours. (timing is for 25°C; at 18°, development takes twice as long.)

http://www.ceolas.org/VL/fly/intro.html

[ant]

8. fruit fly trap!

http://www.smm.org/sln/tf/t/2literbottle/2literbottle.html

That's actually more complicated than necessary, I think. Seems to me you could just drop some fruit into the bottle and forget about the butter tub/film canister. (I used to set these up, but I'd use a piece of paper curled into a cone instead of taping the bottle top in backwards, which seems more efficient to me now. Either way, the baic idea is that the fruit fly gets in but the opening is too small for it to figure out how to get out again. They fill those things up pretty quickly.)

Anyway, this might hold you over until you find the source of your problem.

[NashVegas]

9. I Have That Every Summer

and don't leave fruit around, either. Run around swatting them but they multiply faster than ...

Finally figured out they were using the garbage pail (a can within a can. They were using the outer can) to breed and gave it a thorough going over. Seems to have taken care of it.

[Carni]

12. You said you checked everything but...

Potatoes? Have any stored in an odd place?

How about the trap or whatever it is called on the refrigerator
(that pan thing that you are supposed to empty or drain or whatever)

[DemoTex]

17. No potatoes, but good idea about that drip pan.

.

[barb162]

14. once I thought I had this problem

and everything was cleared out of the kitchen and in the fridge, etc. Still, there they were flying around. After a few days I found where they were coming from. They were in the spice cupboard in a plastic bag of sugar and some of them had eaten their way out. Some had actually gone into the pepper shaker and things you would never ever think. I threw every single damned thing of spice, sugar, powder, etc., out of there and washed the wood down with bleach. Oh disgusting.

[DemoTex]

20. I have a chef's collection of spices. Several different raw sugars too.

I'll check that out.

[barb162]

24. oh and when you look at the peppers and spices

shake the boxes or jars or whatever. These bugs were clumping the pepper and other spices and sugars. You didn't really see them when you looked at the insides of the containers. But when you slowly shook a box or bag of something, it was clumping instead of moving freely like a dry sand or the way you would expect it to move if shaken. Now I will have nightmares of them all over. Really glad I opened this thread tonight. See ya!

[greatauntoftriplets]

16. Gnats like red wine, too.

Also, they are harder to see in red wine vs. white.

[DemoTex]

18. That's why I drinking Shiraz tonight!

Know what I mean Vern?

[greatauntoftriplets]

21. Have you ever tried this shiraz? A very good Australian wine.

http://www.lindemans.com.au/our_wines/europe/bin50_shiraz.asp

[DemoTex]

22. Yep. Got some Lindemans in the "cellar".

Late one night I got some on the "cellular" too.

[greatauntoftriplets]

23. Their merlot also is great.

Aussies make good wine. Only white I drink is pinot grigiot.

[Wilber_Stool]

19. I know the feeling.

I have them too. Cleaned everything. They go away for a wile but they come back. I'll wait for a good answer too.
By the way, the wine I'm drinking kills them.

[johnnie]

25. Have a bad potato?

I had one on the bottom of the stack once and they were all over. It took me a while to find it. Just sayin......

[DemoTex]

31. Nope. Checked. BTW: Dan Quayle sezs you mizpeled "potatoe."

Damn Johnnie, it is a simple word! It is a simple plant. A food, sometimes. P-O-T-A-T-O-E. What is so difficult about that. Kind of like tomatoe. Skinner has provided this very expensive "spell-check," and it's free to registered users. That's a fact. Here, lets click on CHECK SPELLING. Oops. Oh shit. Sorry Johnnie.

[Bertha Venation]

26. No ideas, but take comfort in knowing you're not alone.

I'm sick of 'em. You wouldn't believe their absolute favorite place in our house: the litter boxes. :barf:

[DemoTex]

27. If I thought these critters had been near a litter box ...

I'd be hurling my Shiraz right now. Even with the napkin over the glass, I get a little crunch every now and then.

[Bertha Venation]

28. Yeah, it makes it very difficult to think of eating.

We can't get rid of them, though. Gonna have to find a way to prevent them next summer. I hope the cure does not include refrigerating our fruit & tomatoes. :(

[Bertha Venation]

29. I found a site with a little information

http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/Entomology/entfacts/struct/ef621.htm

[short bus president]

30. We have 'em here in the Piedmont, too

The only thing I've read, aside from the usual sanitation advice, is to check drains - they lay eggs in places where organic wastes accumulate, so an infrequently-used bath or shower, or a frequently-used-but-infrequently-cleaned sink drain could house a colony. Advice I got was to put some packing tape sticky-side down over suspect drain openings overnight, and if there are flies stuck to it in the AM, that drain has eggs. Then there are chemicals that can be used, but a lot of boiling water poured slowly over the drain should do the trick, as well.

[hlthe2b]

32. I've been having this problem off and on for weeks...less, but still there

every since I left garbage out accidentally for 2 days when I went out of town. I sure wish I knew where they were still coming from! This is a nifty device I borrowed which is working well (in fact I'm becoming sickeningly fascinated with how well this sucker works and how many accumulating dead and live little pests are trapped below the "peaceful" blue light with the cool fan blowing. So, now, I haven't strapped any firecrackers to frogs, but I'm feeling a little guilty at the glee I am experiencing with this bug collector device! While I guess I will never be a good prospect to convert to Hinduism, the wider question is-- am I destined to become a sadistic Republican (and if so, can someone do an intervention)?

[miss_kitty]

33. i was at a friends house for dinner on saturday

and Michael was using the vacuum cleaner with the hose attachment and following them around, sucking them out of the air...worked well...got the #s down...that blue thinger in a previous post looked good; i might email them about it....

on edit: i searched and found a URL for the blue bug killer thinger:

http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/productview.jhtml?pid=29592500&pcatid=1&catid=112&catpage=2

and it's only $50 :eyes:

[barb162]

34. once we had wasps in the house that ate through the drywall

they were living in the attic and one fine day ate through the drywall. SO I come home from work and start opening the mail and something flew by my face (fly I thought) and kept opening the mail. It happened again. Looked up and noticed my 4 cats all sitting on the couch and looking up with 4 heads all looking and moving in the same direction. They never ever sat on the same couch together. Walked in that room and I looked up and there were like 100 wasps trying to get out through the skylights. Just what you need when you haven't even changed clothes from work.