God Damn fruitflys!

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

I can tell summer is near. Damn fruitflys everywhere. I have one flying around right now. It's been teasing me since yesterday. Little ****er! I want to kill it before it finds a mate and i end up with 300 in here.

I've been having fantasy's of using a wd40 flame thrower to kill it's ****ing ass. But I know I'd burn the house down.... Still..it IS tempting.

Well I'm going to drink another Trappist and think up new ways to murder fruit flys. Actually, it's not really murder since they invaded my living space. Self defence I tell yuh! Self ****ing Defence!!

Anyone have a good way of trapping/killing these little buggers??!

 

[Brewsmith]

My beer seems to be a trap for them. I had a sample of my Pale Ale out on sunday when I was racking to secondary. I came back a few minutes later and there were two drunk in my glass.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Hmm... yeah, I think they like my hefe. Oxyclean and hefe, here we come.

 

[homebrewer_99]

Why don't you just get a jar lid and put some beer into it for them? Maybe they'll leave your glass alone...?

 

[Evan!]

Usually you can drown them by leaving a tiny glass of beer out for them to drown in...or even a bottle, which they're too stupid to get out of once they're in. I've inadvertently left out almost-empty glasses of beer before, and come back in the morning to find a freakin' fruitfly massacre in the glass.

 

[FireBrewer]

They seemed to really dig my IIPA. When we first moved in 2 years ago we had a problem with 'em, but luckily haven't seen 'em since. They like the moisture of sink drains, so I poured some boiling water down a few and it really helped.

I used to just put foil over my starter flask with a rubber band, came down one day, pulled off the foil and found 3 that were inside the foil, and 2 more actually got into the starter and infected it...smelled like acetone.

 

[ColoradoXJ13]

I work in lab two flights above a couple labs that work on fruit flies, someone must have gone all Free Willy on them this weekend, they are ******* eveywhere, probably doesn't help that I am eating a bananna for breakfast...

 

[EdWort]

Take a clean jar (no other odors in it, soak it in oxiclean or PBW for a day so it is odorless.

Rinse it out, let it dry, then put a piece of banana in it and cover the jar mouth with plastic wrap. Poke holes in it with a sharp pencil. The flies will go in and can't get out. You'll want to clean it out regularly as you'll see larvae develop, but it makes a good fruit fly trap.

 

[c.n.budz]

How about one of those sticky fly strips? Just be careful not to walk into it...

 

[boo boo]

Just leave some star-san out and they'll drown in it. Seems to work for me when I do get the lil buggers.

 

[Fingers]

Vinegar works too.

 

[EvilTOJ]

I always find them in my mead airlock. I read somewhere that fruit flies can actually metabolize alcohol fumes and live! Nasty fookers. Hate them.

 

[uglygoat]

bats. you'll need about a dozen of them, but they'll eat all the fruit flys in your house....

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Oh, tried the bat solution. Worked awesome. Uhm... so.. how do I get rid of bats???

 

[c.n.budz]

Oh, tried the bat solution. Worked awesome. Uhm... so.. how do I get rid of bats???

Easy, a lacrosse stick and a pellet gun... growing up in a 200+ year old house next door to a huge gothic cathedral led to me getting lots of experience getting those things out of the house...

 

[pjj2ba]

Make a paper funnel about 3-4" long with a very small opening. Put this on your container of choice - wine bottles are good. There must be no gap at the sides. Bait can be the last drops of the original wine or a piece of fruit. Some wines work better than others. Banana peels as mentioned work good too. The flies can get in, but they can't get out. Dispose of the flies in whatever manner you set fit.

 

[ProfLight]

Here's my recipe for attracting/killing them:

1) Make sure there is no open fruit/juice/attractant (especially in the trash)
2) Mix 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of vinegar and a couple of drops of dishwashing detergent into one cup (8 ounces) of water. Stir to dissolve the sugar.
3) Set this out of reach of children/drunken adults.
4) They are attracted by the souring fruit smell (vinegar/sugar).
5) The detergent kills them.
6) Replace as needed, but you're going to have a lot of dead fruit flies in it.

Tony

 

[Radarbrew]

Shotgun....I gotta go now, Home Depot has a sale on drywall, and I gotta pick up a few sheets.

 

[EvilTOJ]

OK I used bats to get rid of the fruit flies, but now there's holes all over the place. Plus, what do I do with all these wood splinters. I think next time I'll use aluminum instead of wood.

 

[david_42]

This just in: Nine out of ten fruit flies prefer Mild over an IPA! I need to fill a squeeze bottle with sanitizer & clear the little buggers out before drawing a pint.

[None of them like soda water]

 

[DUCCCC]

Sorry about dragging up an older thread, but it's got to be preferable to starting a new one...

So for the last week or so I've been finding one or two dead small gray fruit flies in my Apfelwein airlock (3 piece). They're actually inside the outer chamber of the airlock, not inside the moving piece, but these little buggers are annoying. I keep freaking out and can't let them just sit there, so I've been removing the airlock, rubber banding a new sandwich baggie over the carboy, dumping the vodka out, soaking all the pieces in sanitizer for a minute or two, and then replacing it on the carboy. I finally got smart enough to ask my wife for a set of her nylons I could cut up, which she willingly sacrificed to the cause. I've now got a filter on the airlock.

Should I be concerned?

Did I deal with this properly?

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Yooper]

It's fine. I have dead fruit flies in mine in the late summer. I have about a dozen airlocks, so when one gets yucky, I just sanitize a different airlock and slap it on. It also helps if you keep the cap on the airlock. Mine came with caps (red caps for the S style, and white caps for the 3 piece) and that helps alot.

 

[DUCCCC]

... Mine came with caps (red caps for the S style, and white caps for the 3 piece) and that helps alot.

That's the funny thing, this does/did have the white cap on it, with the small holes. The flies still worked themselves in there!

 

[rohanski]

I hate fruit flies. The hair on the back of my neck stands up now when I see one.

 

[kinison_fan]

Floating in the airlock you should be OK-I don't think they are swimming under water/vodka into the carboy.
I've had them in my airlock before, and just ignored them.

The pantyhose over the airlock sounds like a good idea.

 

[e lo]

Wine or beer-based traps are great. Putting a little liquid dishsoap on your finger and lightly touching the surface of your trap liquid helps by breaking the surface tension and ensuring the flies get caught in it. We do that in the summers when we get a bloom. A dustbuster is also awesome -- it won't get rid of all of them, by any means, but it's the most effective way I've found to kill one (or two, or ten) that you catch sitting on your fruit/airlock lid/counter. It's really satisfying to suck the little bastards up.

 

[Jim Karr]

A neighbor of mine who's an electronic guru came up with a great idea.

We discussed taking on old functional microwave oven, taking off the door, rigging up the safety switch so it's as if the door was still intact, and turning it on.

The waves will heat up anything in the radiating area in front of the open oven. Can you imagine a cloud of fruitflies starting to heat up and fall to the floor?

 

[Biermann]

My neighbors, friends, and myself have had a swarm of these little F*(&(*&(*s in our house since Fall began. I've tried everything to kill them-- found that Isopropanol in a spray bottle works great. (also if you leave out a small glass of beer).

I hate those damn things. They're finally going away. They've been swarming my fermenters, my kitchen, and when I turn my computer on at night, they swarm the screen.

 

[BierMuncher]

This guy started out as a fruit fly before he drank my glass of Old Speckled Hen:

 

[Biermann]

This guy started out as a fruit fly before he drank my glass of Old Speckled Hen:

View attachment 3288

That'll teach him.