How to get rid of fruit flies in your Metro Vancouver home

Whether it’s a stray piece of rotten fruit or uncomfortably warm temperatures in an old apartment, there’s a number of reasons why fruit flies might pop up.

But regardless of how they came to be, let’s learn a bit about fruit flies and how you can get rid of them.

Why do I have fruit flies? Why are there so many?

Well, the annoying creatures are often born in rotten food and can hitch a ride into your home with produce and it doesn’t take long at all for fruit flies to reproduce.

A female lays about 400 eggs, five at a time, in rotten food. Under the ideal temperature of 25 degrees Celcius, a fruit fly can grow from an egg to larva in about 12 hours, and then from larva to an adult fruit fly in about five days. After that, it’s just two days before a female fruit fly begins breeding.

Male common fruit fly (Drosophila Melanogaster) - about 2 mm long - sitting on a blade of grass with green foliage background
Male common fruit fly (Drosophila Melanogaster). janeff/Getty Images/iStockphoto

So how do I get rid of them?

Dump out rotten food or empty your organics bin.

Again, first trying disposing of any rotten food or empty your organics bins. Be sure your organics bin is cleaned out regularly. If you’re on a garbage collection schedule and your home is too warm to leave organics out, you can always store it in a freezer bag and keep the organics frozen, which prevents the rotten food from becoming the perfect safe haven for fruit flies.

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