You Pinspire Me
I know a thing or two about fruit fly traps, mostly because I have a habit of buying brown bananas (What? 2 pounds of bananas for $0.69 cents? YES, PLEASE!) and then leaving them on the counter for days and days until my husband threatens to either throw them into the Green Bin or toss them into the freezer with the skins still on.
By this point, the fruit flies have gathered and started multiplying faster than you can say ‘banana bread.’
This is not a new habit of mine, so I have had the chance to test out various fruit fly traps over the years – from the cider vinegar with soap, to the dish covered in saran wrap, to yelling at them to get lost (you can imagine how well that last one worked). The best fruit fly trap that I’ve tried, by far, is the paper funnel on top of a glass.
It’s a simple, easy, and crazy effective fruit fly trap.
Eww. I know. Like I said, really brown bananas.
The deal is: the fruit flies detect fermenting fruit and land inside the cone. They walk and walk and walk until they find that magic little hole – and once they’re in, they never come back out.
All you need are these five components:
Wine – red wine seems to work best with our fruit flies.
Tall Glass
1 sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper – feel free to use scrap paper!
Tape
Scissors
- Pour about 1cm of wine into the glass – anything else is just waste!
- Form a long cone width-wise out of your sheet of paper, leaving a tiny hole (just big enough for a fruit fly to crawl through) at the bottom. Secure the paper to itself with tape.
- Place cone into glass (where the bottom should rest a few centimetres to an inch above the wine).
- If needed (sometimes I’m a little hasty while making my cones and they don’t sit nicely on the glass), apply some tape around the top of the glass so that they little buggers don’t sneak out again.
- Trim the paper so it doesn’t look QUITE so ridiculous sitting on your counter.
How many different traps have you tried out? Or have you figured out how to avoid infestations altogether? (I know, I know, I could probably start by no longer buying brown bananas….)
Jenn vanOosten
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Hi! I am SO EXCITED to try this. The fruit flies have been awful lately. Thanks!!
Veru smart! I’ve been doing red wine Ina dish with plastic wrap over it and fork holes poked in it. That works but prob not as well as this!
When we have issues with them, I just leave a glass with some red wine in it…. I have never covered it before…it’s always seemed to work. Will keep this in mind though
you are my hero!
This is really smart. I have just been leaving a glass with a bit of wine in it on the counter and find that they drown in it anyway. I’ll have to try the cone though!
Need to try this one!