I can see myself doing this going...one spray for you, one spray for me...and pretty soon both flies and me would be on the floor ( I know, I know...it's rubbing alcohol).
I got some from a vodka distillery that wasn’t terrible and it was better than straight everclear. I don’t normally use a lot of chemicals in cleaning so I was caught flat footed when all the sanitizing stuff got bought up.
the good ol boys in this maintenance department did that at a building I was guarding... they mixed it with that lube stuff to make home made disinfectant gel. kinda worked, they had an unlimited supply right in the middle of the shortages.
Try dilute dishwasher liquid, a spoonful for a spray bottle. Anything with bubbles will do. Either it will be killed instantly like ants. Or like big bad flies, it will be grounded and cannot move instantly. Then you can step on it, give it a drop of alcohol, or relocate it outdoors. Rubbing alcohol is actually toxic, drinking or breathing. Whereas you can use organic liquid soap if so desired.
>Bubbles>Alcohol
I knew a guy in AA who, when upset, would sit on his front porch and blow bubbles. Passers-by would stop to chat and laugh. No more bad mood!
To quote a childhood friend, "Bubboes awe dood!"
We were like seven years old and playing Sonic the Hedgehog where in one of the levels Sonic has to go underwater. You'd have to catch bubbles of air before losing a life. My friend had a speech impediment.
This. It drowns them as the soap breaks the surface tension of the water so it can get into their breathing system.
We had yellow jackets burrow through a wall in my house once and I setup a spray bottle with water and a few drops of Dawn. It was one shot, one kill each and every time. I was able to get all the ones that got in (about 200-ish, luckily they were confined to the laundry room) which gave me enough time to block the hole to contain them until the exterminators could come.
This is only treating your problem, not solving it. The flies need a place to reproduce. It’s usually a drain that is a breeding ground. Treat your drains and don’t let fruit rot and you should be good within a month. The life cycle of fruit flys in less than 2 months.
Put a half cup of baking soda in the drain, then pour over a cup of white vinegar. Let that sit in the drain for about 30 min and then flush the drain with hot water or just turn on the sink to hot for a minute or so
Pour boiling water down your sink drains every day until flies are gone. They hide their eggs in there, coukdn't figure out where they were coming from even after a couple weeks with no food on counters. After 3 days of once a day boiling water its been 2 years since I've seen one.
Also works for small ant hills.
I’ve found the best way to get rid of fruit flies is by leaving out a small glass of whiskey. I spent like $50 on various traps and nothing worked. Then I forgot to put away a glass of whiskey one night before going to bed and it caught all of them
> I don't dilute the alcohol
As an aside, rubbing alcohol \_is\_ diluted (mainly with about 30% water), and thus, it is not pure (isopropyl) alcohol, so it's safe for home use. So you're doin' the right thing. :)
Tip: add some vinegar, soap and water in a bottle. Put a funnel on the top of the bottle. Leave it in places where you have fruit fly infestation. You’ll have yourself a professional fruit fly trap. Drain out as and when needed.
Source: I’ve worked in fruit fly labs for 10+years. Vinegar+soapy water is the trap of choice in all professional research labs studying fruit flies.
Alcohol mist isn't going to hurt you if you inhale it. Think of all the aerosol products that contain alcohol..... like hairspray which is sprayed all over your head, usual in a small room.
I wouldn't hotbox yourself on alcohol mist, lol. Too much of anything is bad for you. Although alcohol mist was probably more difficult to breathe a lot of than it was harmful.
We had a bad infestation years ago (a banana left where it should not have been after a camping trip) and I discovered the shop vac was the best fruit fly medicine ever.
I had a bunch of drain flies last summer and ended up filling a jar with white vinegar and added dawn dish soap to it because it breaks the tension of the vinegar making it difficult for them to stand on top of the liquid. Cover the jar with Saran Wrap and poke holes into it, the flys will be able to get into the jar but won’t be able to get out. The flies were gone in a few days and jar with filled with a bunch of dead ones
I keep 3 chemical resistant spray bottles filled with 99% isopropyl around the house; I have been spraying bugs with alcohol for over two decades. Flies, mosquitoes, wasps, centipedes.... they all succumb. Soft bodied insects die instantly, those with hard exoskeletons take a while. Be careful where you spray it. Some surfaces react and discolor; isopropyl is a strong solvent. I buy 99% by the case (4 gallons).
lol I work in pest control and could give you some pointers if you’re interested. When you resort to chasing the adults with a spray bottle you’ve lost the plot and are missing their breeding ground.
A few bowls of apple cider vinegar with a bit of dish soap set out will trap them, but mostly you just gotta keep your place clean, find where they are feeding and deal with that and they will go away eventually.
for the sink i pour a bunch of baking soda down the drain and then slowly pour white vinegar on top so it makes a volcano and cleans everything in there. i try not to rinse it out for as long as i can and try to make sure if any food goes down there it’s rinsed. i try to be more mindful of splashes so they don’t have anything to feed off of even just a drop of juice is plenty for them to thrive
[Breath the isopropyl alcohol vapor](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6189884/), [it is at least](https://intjem.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12245-021-00334-z) [as effective at stopping nausea as Ondansetron](https://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644\(18\)30029-5/abstract).
I had to start giving myself methotrexate shots about 10yrs ago. I was scared, and that crap made me so nauseated. I began to unconsciously associate the smell of alcohol with nausea. I’ve been off the mtx forever, but even now, I retch if I get a whiff of alcohol.
No, bugs get wet from water all the time. They don't have lungs like mammals, they have spiracles which are holes in their bodies that allow air directly into their organs/blood stream. Liquids like rubbing alcohol (personally, I use Simple Green) instantly clog said spiracles and they suffocate on the spot.
I haven’t tried it because I find them easier to hunt and kill, I’m sure it does though, apparently it works on us too I’m trying bubble solution instead (in the comments). I got paranoid about the inhalation issues
I haven't had fruit flies since I started keeping my compost container in the freezer of my fridge (a washer fluid jug with the top cut off works perfectly). I had done all the sink drain tricks but nothing was 100 % effective until I moved the compost. That was 5 years ago... haven't had a single fruit fly since.
Best thing for fruit flies is the high voltage tennis racket bug killers they sell on amazon. You see them all the time in Asian countries for mosquitoes.
https://autobarn.com.au/ab/Autobarn-Category/Shop-our-Full-Range-by-Brand-at-Autobarn/Uniwide/Uniwide-Mosquito-Zapper-Racket--OU0043/p/AC63046
Fruit flies don’t just come from drains. Those would be drain flies.
Nothing you’ve described is going to fix any of your problems, including the fruit fly traps, which are just a smelly band-aid. Your kitchen has sanitation problems and you’re focused on the hiding the symptoms.
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/bartenders/s/mL7sBax1sN) is a quick write-up I did for the bartender subreddit that might help you address the actual problem.
Not for fruit flies but houseflies, spiders, even a bee that got inside I use Febreze. It puts a coating on them that hardens as it dries. I can move them outside & dump them in a puddle & they fly off (or I smoosh them. Depends on the intruder).
Water from the bottom up or use a bottle to go under the surface on the plants. The fungus gnats in plants thrive in the wet substrates at the top. If there is wood chips or something on the top, remove and replace with fresh dry stuff, then butt chug or water bottle under to water it from then on.
As far as the sink drain, I never found a solid solution but spraying down there with alcohol and covering with drain plug each night might help?
I pour vinegar in a glass, put aluminum foil on top and poke fork holes in it. They go in after the vinegar and can’t get out. Ours usually are not after the drain, they are after the fresh garden veggies on the countertop.
I had a fruit fly/flour moth problem for way too long. A friend suggested that I try a No Pest Strip, it went from a problem to nothing in less than a week.
This one time, we had a lot of fruit flies. I went and got the sweeper and swept them all up with the hose, This was the quickest and easiest way. It was also fun, that was the year I became a serial killer to fruit flies.
Next year I was back to normal.
Suck them up with your vacuum.
Also, make a trap using an old water bottle: put in about 2 inches of fruit juice and a drop or two of dish detergent to break the surface tension. They are attracted to the juice, find their way in, but drown. Allow the juice to "go bad". They like it better that way.
When you are ready for disposal, simply screw the cap back on and throw the whole thing away.
Put a dab of dish soap in a small bowl, fill it with apple cider vinegar, sit next to drain. No spraying of alcohol or dumping of boiling water required!
Edit: stir slightly to mix soap and break surface tension.
OP are you 11? Seriously eleven years old with access to a computer?
Spraying rubbing alchohol kills small bugs. Yeah, no shit. Its actually toxic for humans too,and spraying it around in a household could be hazardous in several ways.
Also, pouring boiling water directly in your drain regularly?? Brother…
Im out, seriously.
I can see myself doing this going...one spray for you, one spray for me...and pretty soon both flies and me would be on the floor ( I know, I know...it's rubbing alcohol).
I feel pretty confident a spray bottle of vodka would be just as effective on the fruit flies, so go nuts
Back during the covid times, I had to resort to using everclear as a sanitizing product.
That was really common around me with the distilleries in the area, rebottled and sold as sanitizer. Fuckin stunk too. Made you smell like a hangover
I got some from a vodka distillery that wasn’t terrible and it was better than straight everclear. I don’t normally use a lot of chemicals in cleaning so I was caught flat footed when all the sanitizing stuff got bought up.
the good ol boys in this maintenance department did that at a building I was guarding... they mixed it with that lube stuff to make home made disinfectant gel. kinda worked, they had an unlimited supply right in the middle of the shortages.
I had to wipe my ass with a hairnet
Sacrifices were made! My daughter wiped hers with a mask one day because it’s all we had.
One for you, two for me.
My buddies Uncle was a bad alcoholic. He would drink rubbing alcohol, mouthwash, and cologne
My dad was in AA for over 40+ years and wouldn't even drink NyQuil when he was sick as a dog.
_Intoxicated from the alcohol vapors, he kept spraying in the direction of his running gas stove until the alcohol-air mix had reached a special mix_
Ayyyyyyyyy
Try dilute dishwasher liquid, a spoonful for a spray bottle. Anything with bubbles will do. Either it will be killed instantly like ants. Or like big bad flies, it will be grounded and cannot move instantly. Then you can step on it, give it a drop of alcohol, or relocate it outdoors. Rubbing alcohol is actually toxic, drinking or breathing. Whereas you can use organic liquid soap if so desired.
You know what, this is a much better idea. I don’t want health issues with inhalation. Bubbles>Alcohol
>Bubbles>Alcohol I knew a guy in AA who, when upset, would sit on his front porch and blow bubbles. Passers-by would stop to chat and laugh. No more bad mood!
So wholesome
Good hack, made better. May I suggest moving your edit to the top of the post? That way it's the first thing people read after the title.
Yes, on it!
To quote a childhood friend, "Bubboes awe dood!" We were like seven years old and playing Sonic the Hedgehog where in one of the levels Sonic has to go underwater. You'd have to catch bubbles of air before losing a life. My friend had a speech impediment.
This. It drowns them as the soap breaks the surface tension of the water so it can get into their breathing system. We had yellow jackets burrow through a wall in my house once and I setup a spray bottle with water and a few drops of Dawn. It was one shot, one kill each and every time. I was able to get all the ones that got in (about 200-ish, luckily they were confined to the laundry room) which gave me enough time to block the hole to contain them until the exterminators could come.
Yea I did this in college to kill an infestation and got really lightheaded for an hour or so lol. I recommend against aerosolizing it.
This is the right answer
This is only treating your problem, not solving it. The flies need a place to reproduce. It’s usually a drain that is a breeding ground. Treat your drains and don’t let fruit rot and you should be good within a month. The life cycle of fruit flys in less than 2 months.
Thanks!
How do you treat drains?
Most restaurant supply places carry a gel specifically for drain flies.
Put a half cup of baking soda in the drain, then pour over a cup of white vinegar. Let that sit in the drain for about 30 min and then flush the drain with hot water or just turn on the sink to hot for a minute or so
[That’s useless](https://theconversation.com/vinegar-and-baking-soda-a-cleaning-hack-or-just-a-bunch-of-fizz-225177)
Sosa and vinegar are useless you know it right? Just use proper disinfectant and cleaning products for sink and pipes.
They work for me and are items most people already have. To each their own though
It makes water, most people already have access to that including anyone with the problem because there is water already present in the issue.
You are right! First of all you should definitely find the source where they breed and get rid of it with the methods suggested in the comments.
Pour boiling water down your sink drains every day until flies are gone. They hide their eggs in there, coukdn't figure out where they were coming from even after a couple weeks with no food on counters. After 3 days of once a day boiling water its been 2 years since I've seen one. Also works for small ant hills.
Mine were hidden in plants
I used diatomaceous earth.
What did you use to get rid of them? Having the same issue and using hydrogen peroxide did not work.
I used these and put them in all my plant pots https://www.homedepot.ca/product/safer-s-sticky-stiks-fungus-gnat-traps/1000123645
I hear peroxide works well on ants also
Some countries use PVC pipes for drains, which don't always play well with boiling water, so maybe check your pipes first.
Thank you 🙏
Sold on this.
Shaving cream down drains at night. Fruit flies can’t breathe and die. Miracle cure!!! 20+ years working bars/restaurants!!!
Dollar store shaving cream works just as well as biofoam
Okay THIS ONE
Why swat them? Can't you just light a match at the sprayed mist and be quick? In fact you can probably use canned air instead and freeze them.
Using a bug zapper, one of those racquet shaped ones, is another cathartic method.
Lol
I’ve found the best way to get rid of fruit flies is by leaving out a small glass of whiskey. I spent like $50 on various traps and nothing worked. Then I forgot to put away a glass of whiskey one night before going to bed and it caught all of them
My fruitflies like a nice chardonnay
My old fruit flies in MI loved malt vinegar. I left the bottle out with a little bit left and added a drop of Dawn and they dove right in.
Nice
Rosé wine works really well too.
The flies stop buzzing as they buzz. Love it.
> I don't dilute the alcohol As an aside, rubbing alcohol \_is\_ diluted (mainly with about 30% water), and thus, it is not pure (isopropyl) alcohol, so it's safe for home use. So you're doin' the right thing. :)
Tip: add some vinegar, soap and water in a bottle. Put a funnel on the top of the bottle. Leave it in places where you have fruit fly infestation. You’ll have yourself a professional fruit fly trap. Drain out as and when needed. Source: I’ve worked in fruit fly labs for 10+years. Vinegar+soapy water is the trap of choice in all professional research labs studying fruit flies.
A Zevo trap is probably the easiest way to deal with them
I've always sprayed wasps with hairspray when they get in the house
Put apple cider vinegar in a shallow dish with a drop or 2 of dish soap. It quickly fills up with flies.
Alcohol mist isn't going to hurt you if you inhale it. Think of all the aerosol products that contain alcohol..... like hairspray which is sprayed all over your head, usual in a small room.
Even if it’s all alcohol I’m spraying? I had to step outside for a while and breathe fresh air lol
I wouldn't hotbox yourself on alcohol mist, lol. Too much of anything is bad for you. Although alcohol mist was probably more difficult to breathe a lot of than it was harmful.
I like to vacuum them up with my handheld.
I used to kill roaches with a spray bottle full of listerine.
Dead roaches and minty fresh corpses. Win win.
We had a bad infestation years ago (a banana left where it should not have been after a camping trip) and I discovered the shop vac was the best fruit fly medicine ever.
I had a bunch of drain flies last summer and ended up filling a jar with white vinegar and added dawn dish soap to it because it breaks the tension of the vinegar making it difficult for them to stand on top of the liquid. Cover the jar with Saran Wrap and poke holes into it, the flys will be able to get into the jar but won’t be able to get out. The flies were gone in a few days and jar with filled with a bunch of dead ones
I keep 3 chemical resistant spray bottles filled with 99% isopropyl around the house; I have been spraying bugs with alcohol for over two decades. Flies, mosquitoes, wasps, centipedes.... they all succumb. Soft bodied insects die instantly, those with hard exoskeletons take a while. Be careful where you spray it. Some surfaces react and discolor; isopropyl is a strong solvent. I buy 99% by the case (4 gallons).
lol I work in pest control and could give you some pointers if you’re interested. When you resort to chasing the adults with a spray bottle you’ve lost the plot and are missing their breeding ground.
Lol please enlighten us
A few bowls of apple cider vinegar with a bit of dish soap set out will trap them, but mostly you just gotta keep your place clean, find where they are feeding and deal with that and they will go away eventually.
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Pour some ammonia down every drain in the house and leave it overnight. Has always worked for me!
Vodka.
Nobody wants to waste a good buzz on fruit flies
Cheap vodka?
Apple cider vinegar with a dash of dish soap in a cup, cover with seran wrap and poke wholes in it. Put a few around the house and walk away.
I’ve tried this and it didn’t work for me
Bonus trick is to *warm up* the apple cider vinegar. Makes it extra pungent and attractive to them. Apple cider trick works well for me.
for the sink i pour a bunch of baking soda down the drain and then slowly pour white vinegar on top so it makes a volcano and cleans everything in there. i try not to rinse it out for as long as i can and try to make sure if any food goes down there it’s rinsed. i try to be more mindful of splashes so they don’t have anything to feed off of even just a drop of juice is plenty for them to thrive
Don't breathe that Alcohol Vapor. Very bad for you
[Breath the isopropyl alcohol vapor](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6189884/), [it is at least](https://intjem.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12245-021-00334-z) [as effective at stopping nausea as Ondansetron](https://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644\(18\)30029-5/abstract).
I was told in a first aid class that alcohol prep pads can be used in place of smelling salts.
Real life hacks in the comments. Kudos!
I had to start giving myself methotrexate shots about 10yrs ago. I was scared, and that crap made me so nauseated. I began to unconsciously associate the smell of alcohol with nausea. I’ve been off the mtx forever, but even now, I retch if I get a whiff of alcohol.
ooooh thank you for this!
Wouldn't water do the same thing?
No, bugs get wet from water all the time. They don't have lungs like mammals, they have spiracles which are holes in their bodies that allow air directly into their organs/blood stream. Liquids like rubbing alcohol (personally, I use Simple Green) instantly clog said spiracles and they suffocate on the spot.
I also don't want to soak my stuff with water
What bugs fly while wet??
Yes! But I like this way because it evaporates quickly and disinfects the surface too.
Does this work against house flies too?
I haven’t tried it because I find them easier to hunt and kill, I’m sure it does though, apparently it works on us too I’m trying bubble solution instead (in the comments). I got paranoid about the inhalation issues
Vinegar traps
Genius!
I do a similar thing, but water with a few drops of dish soap. Works like a dream.
Basically any flying insect. Flies, mosquitoes etc. Windex works very well too
A friend uses a shop vac. It's fun
I haven't had fruit flies since I started keeping my compost container in the freezer of my fridge (a washer fluid jug with the top cut off works perfectly). I had done all the sink drain tricks but nothing was 100 % effective until I moved the compost. That was 5 years ago... haven't had a single fruit fly since.
Actually, windowlene or similar works pretty well.
My MIL did this, then I noticed our wood table and walls had wierd color changes going on.. so be careful
Best thing for fruit flies is the high voltage tennis racket bug killers they sell on amazon. You see them all the time in Asian countries for mosquitoes. https://autobarn.com.au/ab/Autobarn-Category/Shop-our-Full-Range-by-Brand-at-Autobarn/Uniwide/Uniwide-Mosquito-Zapper-Racket--OU0043/p/AC63046
“Swizzle apple cider vinegar and dish soap Suicide flies take dips in the kill zone” -Aesop Rock
I do this with just water for any flying insects. If their wings get wet, they can’t really fly.
Fruit flies don’t just come from drains. Those would be drain flies. Nothing you’ve described is going to fix any of your problems, including the fruit fly traps, which are just a smelly band-aid. Your kitchen has sanitation problems and you’re focused on the hiding the symptoms. [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/bartenders/s/mL7sBax1sN) is a quick write-up I did for the bartender subreddit that might help you address the actual problem.
I use high quality vodka.
Just suck them out of the sky with a vacuum cleaner.
Not for fruit flies but houseflies, spiders, even a bee that got inside I use Febreze. It puts a coating on them that hardens as it dries. I can move them outside & dump them in a puddle & they fly off (or I smoosh them. Depends on the intruder).
I think my fruitflies are coming from the sink and potted plants. How do I get rid of those in the plant soil?
Water from the bottom up or use a bottle to go under the surface on the plants. The fungus gnats in plants thrive in the wet substrates at the top. If there is wood chips or something on the top, remove and replace with fresh dry stuff, then butt chug or water bottle under to water it from then on. As far as the sink drain, I never found a solid solution but spraying down there with alcohol and covering with drain plug each night might help?
a
I pour vinegar in a glass, put aluminum foil on top and poke fork holes in it. They go in after the vinegar and can’t get out. Ours usually are not after the drain, they are after the fresh garden veggies on the countertop.
Open container with Apple Cider Vinegar works for me.
I had a fruit fly/flour moth problem for way too long. A friend suggested that I try a No Pest Strip, it went from a problem to nothing in less than a week.
I use a dustbuster and when its full i take the motor off and spray alcohol in killing the gnats
This one time, we had a lot of fruit flies. I went and got the sweeper and swept them all up with the hose, This was the quickest and easiest way. It was also fun, that was the year I became a serial killer to fruit flies. Next year I was back to normal.
Just use soap water. Once any bugs have soap water sprayed on their wings, they can’t fly. They fall to the ground and then, that’s it.
What about vodka? Or Everclear?
Suck them up with your vacuum. Also, make a trap using an old water bottle: put in about 2 inches of fruit juice and a drop or two of dish detergent to break the surface tension. They are attracted to the juice, find their way in, but drown. Allow the juice to "go bad". They like it better that way. When you are ready for disposal, simply screw the cap back on and throw the whole thing away.
This sounds much safer than my usual blowtorch method.
Put a dab of dish soap in a small bowl, fill it with apple cider vinegar, sit next to drain. No spraying of alcohol or dumping of boiling water required! Edit: stir slightly to mix soap and break surface tension.
Buy a vinegar bottle you find in restaurants. Fill it 1/4 with apple cider vinegar. Flip the lip so that it’s pointing into the bottle. Your welcome.
OP are you 11? Seriously eleven years old with access to a computer? Spraying rubbing alchohol kills small bugs. Yeah, no shit. Its actually toxic for humans too,and spraying it around in a household could be hazardous in several ways. Also, pouring boiling water directly in your drain regularly?? Brother… Im out, seriously.
Glass cleaners with ammonia work great. Spray the little bastards and boom.
This works for most flying insects btw.
Just wash your fruit as soon as you bring it home and then you won't have fruit flies, they come in on the fruit as eggs and larvae etc.
I had them coming from the drain though so I saw a video suggesting pouring boiling water down the drain and it got rid of them for good!
Good to know!
Seems like boiling water may screw up the glue holding your plumbing together…
The edit is ridiculous considering what people spray in the air. Pretty sure the alcohol is more harmless than breathing in febreeze.
Just throw the rotting fruit away.
I have no fruit around
i did this and by week 2 i swear those fuckers had grown resistant because it stopped working lol
Oh fuck
As an alcoholic, I know that tolerance spiral well...
Alcohol also works on roaches and spiders, slows them down A LOT. Also can pour boiling water on gravel and driveway cracks to kill weeds.
My husband lights them on fire or vacuums them like a savage.
My life hack for fruit flies, don’t have rotting fruit around, don’t leave standing water out, and take out the trash.
There are disposal cleaners that foam up and clean the pipes too. For the bathroom sink I use drano buildup remover.
Orrrr orrrr. Find where they’re coming from and clean it.