They fly into our lives. We see them individually and small clusters, hovering over bananas and apples, pears and nectarines. Since our daughter, our resident health expert, began remarking on the amounts of fresh fruit we weren’t buying and consuming, we’ve attempted to create a facade that it’s happening on an ongoing, sustained basis. In fact, it’s become part of our household fruit culture. Each purchase stays a while, and some actually gets eaten. Most important, it provides a veritable wedding feast for the fruit flies. They seem to be proliferating at an alarming rate, so I’m presuming there is a ritual involved for which we’re supplying the reception banquet.
Do we as a society really need more insects? I understand the ecology of bees, ladybugs, and all those other tiny things that pollinate their little wings off. Even mosquitos are a bat buffet, so, hard as I’ve tried to mitigate their existence, they do contribute in ways besides merely spreading malaria. Some insects though, to my mind, don’t earn their keep. Fruit flies are right at the top of the “totally useless insects” pyramid. Do they add anything meaningful to the environment? Allow me to explain.
They’re too small for a flyswatter or a rolled up newspaper. There’s a downside right there. They’re always in the kitchen, so spraying with chemical insecticides is probably not a good idea. We can put out ant cups because, well, ants start at ground level and we can greet them at the door. On the patio or deck, we can use bug zappers to reduce the population, or if you’re a naturalist, you can put up one of those decorative hanging traps. I’m always impressed by those that I see in catalogues. They’re brightly colored glass into which hornets and bees fly, only to be trapped. Now you have a decorative, see-through glass ornament filled with dead bugs. How much more attractive can your garden be? There are even plants like marigolds or citrus plants that drive away certain bugs. Not sure whether that a scent or an aversion to vitamin C. That odor thing seems like an ideal solution, but so far, I’m not seeing anything that will work inside. And, if you drive them away from the kitchen, they’ll just go disburse to other parts of the house, making us think we’re seeing little black spots. So, what to do, what to do about those teeny, tiny pests?
My daughter, once again the expert and ever the practical one, went online, discovering that a small mixture of red wine and dish soap in a shallow dish will attract them and dispatch them to a liquid graveyard. The dish soap catches them, while the red wine appeals to their “fruitier” senses. I tried this, selecting a nice Malbec. My assumption is that fruit flies have acquired a taste for a more nuanced wine. Surprisingly, though, not so much. They ignored the dish with almost haughty abandon, flying right over and around the dish to taunt me. That was discouraging, so I took the bull by the horns and applied an old vine Zinfandel to the problem. This has brought a better response – there were three or four caught in the mixture the next day. Perhaps more pungent bouquet, with overtones of “blackberries and mushrooms” seemed to work. Really? Forget the oak – go for the berries. Who knew that mushrooms would do the trick? Could be that musky, earthy, damp basement aroma that titillates their microscopic senses.
While I’m pressing on with the Zinfandel, establishing it as a baseline, I fully intend to experiment with other varieties. This is an area that absolutely cries out for more extensive research. For example, would a full-bodied cabernet pull in a more extensive fruit fly audience? Perhaps we could get by with a moderately priced merlot, which as everyone knows, is sort of the parsnip of red wines. Does price even matter in this case? If I ply these bugs with plonk, will they catch on fairly quickly and start avoiding the dish altogether? Where do fruit flies stand in domestic versus imported debate? If these are French fruit flies, well then, that’s a game changer.
Existing research also does not indicate whether white wines will work as well as red. It’s a lot easier with white wines to see if you’ve caught anything. Maybe it’s a seasonal thing. One can use white wines in the warm weather, switching to reds in the Fall and Winter. We also don’t know if the dish soap makes a difference. Does a name brand work better, or can one go generic? I’ve been using one with “citrus energy oxy”, whatever the heck that is. I’ve never thought of dish soap as an energy-infused product, but . . . who knows? Maybe the oxy part overwhelms the fruit flies and they drop, dazed and confused, into the mixture.
So, the experimentation and the research go on. I expect to be consuming a fair quantity of red wines left over from my testing in the relentless pursuit of knowledge. It’s a small price to pay for scientific research. Some may scoff, turning their research grants to the more pressing issues of the day, like developing seedless avocados or creating strains of thistles without thorns. I, however, consider the fruit fly a scourge of people kind, and thus it’s eradication a high priority. Up next are a very nice Carmeniere and a red table wine. We’ll see how those attract the pesky little bugs, though I suspect that they may draw the line at blends. In the event that I get truly adventurous, I may even sample a crisp Chardonnay to see if there’s a color preference. As the fruit fly trials go on, I’ll be reporting out to my faithful readers as well as to the International Fruit Fly Institute. A major informational article is in the offing, and should be available in some upcoming edition of the institute’s magazine, Tiny Bugs Among Us. Should you need advice or counselling on the subject in the meantime, please feel free to contact me at this blog site for valuable insights and updates.
I'm Thinking...No! 