Don’t like to use vinegar to attract fruit flies? Wondering how to trap fruit flies without vinegar? There are lots of options!
No one likes fruit flies. They are pesky, annoying and seem to come from nowhere to hover around your favorite fruit.
The easiest way to get rid of them is to use the Culinesco Fruit Fly Funnel with some apple cider vinegar and a mason jar. You can read more about how to use the Fruit Fly Funnel HERE.
Apple cider vinegar is not the only way to attract fruit flies. Below are FIVE more things to place in a mason jar to lure those pesky fruit flies with our Fruit Fly Funnel.
Fruit flies are attracted to the scent of ripe (especially overripe) fruit. Hence a piece of fruit can work really well to coax fruit flies into a trap. Bananas work beautifully, but other sweet fruit can work as well.
There is, however, a danger to using ripe fruit to lure fruit flies. Fruit flies lay their eggs in fruit, so if you leave fruit out too long you run the risk of actually breeding more fruit flies! If you'd like to use fruit to get rid of fruit flies, we recommend changing out the fruit in your trap often.
Alcohol can be a powerful inducement to get fruit flies into your trap where you’d like them to stay. Some alcohols will work better than others because fruit flies prefer fruit. Fruit based alcohols such as wine will work best and the sweeter the better.
Because beer is fermented like wine, it also has the power to tempt fruit flies. You might try a dessert beer because they have a sweeter taste and smell, which fruit flies prefer.
If you don’t have any whole fruit or alcohol, fruit juice can work in a pinch to cajole those fruit flies. We have had good results with orange juice. Some fruits, however, might mold if left out too long, so keep that in mind.
Another kind of fermentation that can attract fruit flies is yeast in a little sugar water. Just add a teaspoon of basic bread yeast and a teaspoon of sugar to a little water in your trap and the fruit flies will find their way in. While yeast is an effective bait, we have seen it take a bit longer than others to get going.
Regardless of the method you use to entice fruit flies away from your favorite fruit, you need a simple and eco-friendly way to capture them. Our Fruit Fly Funnel is the simplest answer because all you need is a mason jar and one of the items on the above list.
Let us know which one you try and how it works!
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Susan Beckstrand
May 19, 2023
It seems like the fruit flies I have like it when I have water in the sink. If I don’t get to it and the water cools they hover