Tired Of Fruit Flies In Your Kitchen? This Type Of Beverage Can Help Solve Your Problem

Fruit flies are a frustrating kitchen pest that seem to take over our kitchens in the summer and fall, the peak harvest seasons, when we bring lots of fresh produce into our homes. There may already be eggs in these fruits and veggies waiting to hatch, like countertop ticking time bombs. This is why you should definitely be rinsing fresh fruit when you get it home. Once those eggs have hatched and the flies matured, clean, dry wine corks can help get rid of those pesky bugs because they absorb the moisture surrounding the fruit the flies love to thrive on. But there is one alcoholic beverage that can help: beer.

If you don't want to wait for the flies to die off naturally, making a fly trap is simple using a few kitchen staples. Pouring one to two inches of beer into the vessel of your choice, which can be the beer bottle itself, is a simple and efficient fruit fly trap. For a more lethal bait, add a few drops of dish soap to the beer. Cover the container lid with plastic wrap, secure it with a rubber band so it doesn't fall off, then poke a few holes in the plastic, and you're all set. The flies will climb in through the holes but find it difficult to fly back out again and eventually drown.

Not all humans know the difference between ale and lager, but it turns out fruit flies do. At least, different varieties of flies have a beer preference. According to Kevin Verstrepen, director of the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology in Belgium, the type of fruit fly people are most likely to find in their kitchens (drosophila melanogaster), prefer beers with fruity aromas that mimic the scent of overly ripe, fermenting fruit, such as brown and amber ales. Agricultural fruit flies (Drosophila suzukii) lay their eggs in fruit while it is still in the field, hence their attraction to hoppier blonde beers, which emit a similar unripe aroma. When setting your beer trap, you are better off choosing an ale over a lager.

Beer is not the only alcoholic beverage that attracts fruit flies, though. Both red and white wine have proven to be effective fly traps. Sweeter, slightly aged wines work best, but any cheap wine will do. Like with beer, the wine bottle itself can act as the trap with just a few inches of wine left at the bottom.