Fruit flies: how to deal with fruit flies in an apartment
Very often in the summer, you should leave a piece of watermelon on the table, put on some homemade kvass, and instantly the whole kitchen is filled with small, and at first glance, harmless little midges.
However, after a few days their number increases several times. In a short period of time, they can spoil kvass, unsealed jam, and any fruits or vegetables.
In addition, these ubiquitous insects can settle on indoor plants. Sometimes they seem to come out of nowhere.
In the summer, the windows in the houses are open, but in the winter? To understand how to deal with fruit flies, you need to try to figure out who they are, how they reproduce, and what they eat.
Content:
Drosophila, who are they?
Inconspicuous in nature, but unpleasant in human homes, small fruit flies are a very large family.
Most species living in nature live in humid places; many prefer areas with a warm climate, where various fruits ripen in abundance.
However, eight species of Drosophila are ubiquitous and are called cosmopolitans.
These species include Drosophila black-bellied, or Drosophila milanogaster. In addition, this species is synanthropic; it lives and develops next to humans.
The second name for Drosophila black-bellied is fruit fly or wine fly. Consequently, she lives where there are a lot of rotten and fermented fruits.These are primarily storage facilities in which picked fruits.
Some of them are damaged and begin to rot very quickly. It is rotting fruit that attracts female insects. This is due to the fact that the laid larvae will feed on spoiled fruits.
It is worth saying that the full development cycle of an insect is 10 days. The warmer the air, the faster the transformation from egg to adult insect. At temperatures below 18 degrees, the development cycle extends to 20 days.
In order to lay three to four hundred eggs, a female only needs to mate with a male once. The egg is only half a millimeter in size and cannot be seen by the human eye.
This is where the mystery of where the flies in the apartment come from lies. If there are several eggs on fruits and vegetables that are brought into the house from a store or market, then new individuals will immediately appear from them.
If at this moment there is any nutrient medium in the apartment, then the flies will begin to multiply instantly. After all, the fruit fly chooses a soft, moist substrate with rotting parts of plants as a place for laying, but it is especially attracted to rooms where fruits are stored or processed.
A day later, a larva emerges from the egg laid by the female, which actively feeds on fruit tissues and microorganisms living in rotting fruits, grows rapidly and within five days turns into a pupa, and after another five days an imago emerges from the pupa.
In less than 12 hours, the fruit fly will mate with the male and lay new eggs. To stop the non-stop reproduction fruit flies, you need to carry out several mandatory steps.
How to quickly get rid of fruit flies
The first and most important action is to immediately remove from public access:
- vegetables
- fruits
- sweet drinks
- yeast products
- candies
- lactic acid products
There should be nothing sweet, sour, fruit or other products of plant origin in the apartment. Onions, potatoes, a jar of jam, a dirty trash can - all this can be a habitat and breeding place for fruit flies.
After the power source has been detected and removed, you can use any chemical repellent against flying insects and treat the apartment with the windows closed, after which everything is well ventilated.
If you completely remove fruits or vegetables from the apartment, there is no possibility, for example, some part of the harvest is stored in it, or compote or jam is actively preserved for the winter, then you can use several methods that will significantly reduce the number of insects.
You can hang ready-made sticky traps in your apartment; several dozen or even hundreds of insects will instantly stick to them. You can make traps from auxiliary materials yourself.
Drosophila traps
If there are watermelon rinds left over from the evening, and it is during this period of mass ripening of melons that there is an invasion of flies, put them in a tall bag.
In the morning, when most of the insects are inside, try to quickly tie the bag and take it out of the house at the same second, taking the trash can at the same time. Treat the individuals that have managed to fly out with any aerosol against flying insects.
Another way is to set a trap in a glass jar or plastic bottle. If you pour kvass or fruit juice there, it will attract insects inside.
Make a funnel out of paper and insert it into the neck.Flies will easily get inside through the wide end, but they will have a hard time getting out. After a few hours, close the trap and throw it away.
If in ctwig pots the ground is too wet and there is a lot of plant debris, then Drosophila can choose them as their place of residence.
Remove all plant debris from the pots, dry the soil, ventilate the room, take the popular advice and stick a few matches into the ground with their heads down.
If such measures do not help, then you should try to replace the soil with sterile one and spray the plant with a soap solution.
In conclusion, it is worth saying that the annoying and unpleasant Drosophila has been serving science for many years; with its help, numerous studies in the field of genetics are being conducted and discoveries important for human health are being made.
How to easily get rid of fruit flies at home:
Interesting information about the vegetable garden
Comments
If these flies are completely cut off from access to water and all fruits and vegetables that are even slightly spoiled are thrown away, then they will disappear on their own in just a few hours, at least in an apartment this is the case.