Hi again it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose farm and one of the not so fun aspects of living in
a fairly rural area is that we are subject to the different kinds of insects that come up seasonally
in the mid-summer I think I've mentioned we get hit badly by mosquitoes and then they subside a
little bit but now that we're in the harvest season we're in a blueberry area there's lots
of fruit on the ground there's lots of apples on the ground I'll show you some shots of some
things outside there's lots of fruit flies around and in addition to that we're heavy on the black
flies right now so it almost doesn't matter what kind of precautions you take if you have this
many fruit flies around we have screens here on the outer decks we have screens on our doors we
obviously try our best to keep from leaving garbage and fruit hanging around the kitchen
you know up here cleaning standards but no matter how hard you try you're still going to get these
pests and what in this video I want to tell you the ways I get rid of both of these pests and
it's very similar traps either way one is for the fruit flies and the second one is for black fly
the way both of these traps are designed is that they have a pool of I'm going to say attractant
or bait in the bottom of the Trap and then the top of it just has a way to then get in but it
prevents them from getting out I like this design of trap because first of all I find it to be very
effective in both cases but second of all because it doesn't use any pesticides I'm not expected to
use any pesticides around the house or spraying which I would be reluctant to do so if I can
deal with them sort of in a very targeted way that's the way I would do it so first up
for the fruit flies this one here is based on the very classic thing of apple cider vinegar I'm
going to show you how it's done in the kit here but I also will show you a do-it-yourself solution
because it's not that hard to construct a trap like this Effectiveness I'll do a comparison here
just so you can see homemade versus the commercial type shop but these commercial traps are not very
expensive either this was a kit that I got for around five dollars so it wasn't a ton and it's
already got the apple cider vinegar in it so the design of it is made and I'll get you a close-up
of these that you just pull off a plastic wrap put on the lid and the top of it becomes a funnel that
the fruit flies can go down into but they have a hard time flying out of I'm going to replicate
the same thing just a little a little thimble full of apple cider vinegar and I'll put a tape across
the top and I'll try to make a trap that works comparably well the second one is one that I'm
going to use for the black flies this one I don't think there's a good do-it-yourself version the
way it's made is you sorry fill it up with water that fills this bag here and there's something in
that bag that creates something foul smelling to me but it really attracts the black flies
that go in through this plastic piece at the top that it's hanging from but they can't find their
way back out and it just seems to collect the black flies by the hundreds let me give you a
closer look as to how both of these work upon setting out the commercial trap they found it
no problem within seconds it seemed like I I have seen mixed reviews on these commercial
apple cider vinegar-based traps with some people saying inexplicably that the fruit flies just
didn't go for it and I have to wonder in this case whether part of the explanation could be
a misdiagnosis of pests because both Shore flies and fungus gnats look very much like fruit flies
but certainly wouldn't be attracted to apple cider vinegar I do have a video that I've done on fungus
gnats anyway that I'll link up above here so you can see how to take care of that problem
well here's my homemade alternative to it this is one of those little red shot glasses
or condiment cups you could use any kind of a little temporary container it's made out
of plastic and in this case all I'm going to do to kind of create my trap is I'm going to
place a little bit of masking tape across the top in this case just this wide yellow masking
tape right here make sure it's sealed around the edges I'll use a second slice to overlap
and I think the trick is to not make such a big hole they can just fly right back out
but it is a pretty small Target and from the other side anyway this is sticky so they shouldn't be
able to just crawl up and well it's been four or five days now it's time to get a look at what
these fruit fly traps have done in the kitchen hope you can see floating around at the top of
the apple cider vinegar there that this trap has done fairly well it wasn't in a very busy part of
the kitchen it was over by the cupboards and it's still got I counted 41 fruit flies all floating
across the top there so that's pretty impressive but the one that did the Lion's Share of the work
was this one here taking the lid off of it I did that to count it and I hope I can get you
that some of the fresher ones are still floating but the older ones have dropped to the bottom of
the solution there and I counted 85 fruit flies in this one here and again that was on the windowsill
above the kitchen sink where they seem to have a calm congregated the most this makeshift one
that I made didn't do quite as well and it was also on the kitchen sink so it was in direct
competition with the commercial trap in the center there I'll pull off the tape here so
you can see that it only caught a very few I think I counted five in there so it wasn't as
successful I had theorized that maybe the tape would make it harder for them to get in and out
of this but it certainly did not do as good a job as the plastic lid at keeping them in fact what I
did see because I just had that little hole in the top lid and they were finding their way in
and out of there no problem seeing the stickiness was no problem for them so if I were to try this
again I guess I might top it with fly paper or something along those lines but honestly when it
comes down to it when you've got a trap like this that just right out of the box is able to do that
amount and with such a simple design and these traps will last for two months apparently and
what's more I have to say is a as another positive thing about these is that there was no capture
of other non-target insects so it was really very focused on the fruit flies well just for the sake
of a better angle here I've taken the fly trap down and pinned it to the back of this chair so
we can see inside and what I hope you'll be able to see is that there's actually some little black
flies still flying around in there they've found their way in through the top but because of the
way that inner cone is shaped they can't find their way back out which is fantastic if you look
further down into the fluid there what you can see now is that there are literally well probably a
couple dozen flies that have found the Trap found their way in through the top and then eventually
run out of energy and just dropped down into the fluid all right I hope that gives you some good
idea about how these simple bait type traps can work on fruit flies and black flies obviously
they're a do-it-yourself Alternatives available but the way I go with it is that if there's
a simple and inexpensive commercial solution available why should I reinvent the wheel now
I did find these at local stores but because people will be asking me where to find them
I look for them on Amazon I've added them to my Amazon lists that's linked down below the video
if you have any other questions on this topic or anything else to do with Pest Control around the
house and garden drop something into the comments below the video I'll see what I can do to help