Small Flies Are Driving Us Crazy

While the window is open these flies are so small that they can get through the screen. I watched them do it. so I'm changing out my screens to a smaller mesh.

I used an old plastic dish one of those glad storage things taped fly paper around upper edge cause that's where they land, then hang a fly paper partway down into the dish, also dipped the fly paper in the solution of wine, apple vinegar, and apple juice that I put in dish, talk about a fly magnet. Best to use the whole fly paper strip wrapped around dish the small size disposable Glad one. just add solution as needed. They don't stand a chance. Put in window cause light also draws them in along with the smell, the wine smell seems the most potent, apple cider works well too.

Fruit flies can live on fruit, in the residue in pop or juice cans or bottles, in garbage, on soil in house plants. And they reproduce every 3 days or something like that, so you have to keep treating for them if you don't find the source. Conversely, if you do find all the places that they are breeding, and get rid of those, the little beggers will die after a couple of days, and that will be the end of them. Any spray insecticide kills them, but you must get rid of whatever it is that they are breeding on.

Fruit flies can be around even without the fruit. If you have indoor plants, put diatomaceous earth in the soil. We had this problem at work in offices without food. It got rid of all the flies within 2 days.

I used the apple cider vinegar and a couple drops of dish soap in my kitchen, and was amazed at how well it worked. I was also horrified at how many were in there.

Here is one recipe I got from this site:

1. Take styrofoam plate with a big enough lip to allow 1/4" - 1/2" of apple cider vinegar, pour into plate.
2. Take Lemon Joy or Lemon Palmolive dish washing liquid soap. Not hand washing soap. Not dishwasher machine soap. It's yellow liquid dish washing soap that you'd use to wash dishes by hand. Must be lemon.
3. Take the liquid soap and make a squiggle with it, a back and forth motion with the liquid soap on top of the vinegar.

Now I've only used this outside at night and in the morning it was revolting to see what died in the mixture. Those huge black flies; smaller black flies and any number of gnats and gnat-like bugs floating in the mixture.

I've heard it works in the home too.
I believe the original recipe said that the soap had to be Palmolive brand, but I didn't have any and the dollar store had Lemon Joy by Proctor & Gamble. But it does have to be lemon because Dawn dish washing liquid soap didn't work.

Good luck!

I used those Black Flag sticky glue paper hangers in my house and it worked well. They are cheap and nontoxic.
You can also try making a fly catcher out of a two liter soft drink bottle. (Do a web search for better instructions.)
Basically you cut the empty bottle a third of the way down from the spout pour top. Then place a chunk of fruit in the bottom of the bottle (good bite size, the more fragrant the better) and then replace and secure the top half you cut away, Inverted upside down into the bottom.
The flies crawl in but won't be able to figure out how to fly out of it.
It will look like a funnel setting in a bowl.