There's nothing more embarrassing than inviting friends or family over, only for them to walk into a fruit fly-infested kitchen. And I'd know, because it happened to me on Friday when I threw a pizza party.
It turns out that fruit flies love yeast. After leaving my bread to prove for a few hours, it felt like a colony of fruit flies had materialized from nowhere, ready to swarm my (thankfully covered) bread dough in search of sustenance.
I have previously raved about my fruit fly-busting routine, which took my kitchen from a full-on infestation to completely pest-free. And don't get me wrong, the routine still works a charm, but I let it slip in the past few weeks and paid for it handsomely.
Fortunately, after testing the Super Ninja fruit fly trap and seeing how effective it was at catching these pesky gnats, I stocked up on a bumper pack for emergencies. And if you want to know just how awesome these little traps are, I (unfortunately) managed to capture the evidence for myself. Shudder.
Why it works
It's prime fruit fly season, so if you're dealing with an infestation, you should know that you're not alone. "Fruit flies can be a nuisance all year round," says the experts at GardenBuildingsDirect, "but they thrive during warmer weather as fruit and vegetables begin to ripen, making this time of the year ideal for them."
The design of the Super Ninja is simple and hands-off. It's a pre-filled plastic container with a natural liquid bait that mimics the scent of decaying fruit to lure flies. And let me tell you, the fruit flies love this liquid. Within minutes of putting out the trap, they'd swarmed the yellow trap on top of the bottle, effectively forming an orderly queue to sink to their sticky demise.
I'm more than a little embarrassed to post the photographic evidence here, but you can rest assured that since Friday, the fruit flies have all but vanished from my kitchen.
One of my favorite parts of this trap is how fast it works. The above photo was taken minutes after I opened a new trap, and it removed the bulk of the flies from my kitchen.
I supplemented this with a renewed respect from my old faithful fruit fly routine, pouring boiling water down my sink (where fruit flies love to lay their eggs) and moving my fruit bowl back inside my refrigerator, where the flies couldn't get to it.
How to stop them coming back
Well, here's some more proof for you. I kept this trap next to my sink throughout the month of June, and snapped a gross picture of just how many flies it'd managed to catch before I swapped it out.
Super Ninja recommends you switch out your trap every two weeks, but I've found that it's still pretty effective up to a month after first use.
Although they're called fruit flies for a reason, that's not the only thing in your kitchen that can attract pests. "They lay their eggs on the surface of rotting or overripe fruit and vegetables," says the experts at GardenBuildingsDirect, "but can also breed in drains, bins, mop buckets, and anywhere else with damp, decaying organic matter.
If you're seriously struggling to get rid of the fruit flies, you should consider putting a trap near other drains in your home.
At the worst of my infestation, I found flies in my upstairs bathroom. They presumably got there through the drain system in my home, so I left a trap on the edge of the sink and flushed it with boiling water every day to prevent any new eggs from hatching.
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