They may be called fruit flies, but they don’t just sit on fruit. They also like coffee grounds, tea bags and flowers. Especially annoying when you open the trash can and a swarm flutters past your head. Or if they have flown into your glass of beer, wine or juice.
And people are annoyed by that.
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simple life
In the summer it starts with a few flies, but in no time they have become whole hordes. “Where fruit starts to rot – and they realize that before we do – they lay their eggs,” Professor of Entomology Marcel Dicke of Wageningen University told RTL Nieuws.
Fruit flies have simple lives, Dicke says. “The females go to a restaurant, the males come to it, and there they mate. And in that restaurant the flies also lay their eggs. The larvae live on yeast that the mother has brought herself.” It’s a perfect place to grow up.
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The animals have a short life cycle. After more than a week they start to become adults, and a few weeks later their lives are already over. But they reproduce quickly, especially at higher temperatures. Females can lay hundreds of eggs that are barely visible to the naked eye.
Walhalla
Clouds of fruit flies can form in a good place, such as a GFT container. Dicke: “It’s a Valhalla in there: there is a lot of fermenting fruit and it is sweltering hot.”
It sounds gross: fruit flies laying eggs on your food. But they are clean animals, explains Dicke. “We know about houseflies that eat feces and dead animals. Then that is not fresh if they then sit on your cheese and meat.”
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This is not the case with fruit flies: they are clean animals. In fact, everyone eats them. “We know, for example, that they are in packs of orange juice. There is a limit to this: manufacturers have to check whether there are not too many eggs in the pulp. But we also know: pulp is extremely healthy, you get extra protein with it. within.”
Store well
All in all: fruit flies are not so bad. But would you rather lose them than get rich? Make sure not all of your fruit is in the fruit bowl. “Keeping it properly in the fridge helps a bit,” says Dicke. “And don’t let your fruit ripen too long.”
You can also make your own fruit fly trap. You do this by putting some honey or wine in a small bowl, possibly supplemented with a little baker’s yeast. Put a lid or foil on the container and poke a hole in it. The fruit flies crawl in, but can’t get out afterwards.
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You can also put a carnivorous plant in your kitchen. For example, the Cape sundew. Dicke: “They have those sticky, glandular hairs that eat the flies. But to be really effective, you’ll need quite a few of them.”
vacuuming
And the vacuum cleaner as a weapon? “That won’t help much. Most fruit flies just crawl out through the valve. All in all: prevention is better than cure.”
And eventually, as the days get shorter and the temperature drops, you don’t see them anymore.
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