fruit flies in dorm room

Sam

yeah, fucking gross. We've got a ftuir fly problem. We can't open our windows, because they have a grill installed that only lets air (and smoke:D ) in and out. I'm getting tired of making up excuses to not bring people in the room, what's the quickest way we can get rid of them?

Nozz

Clean up... they're obviously attracted to some sort of food source in the room. If your room is clean, then steamvac the carpet or something. They will die SO FAST without food or water.

Brodo Faggins

I imagine the smell in your room is god-awful, and you're just used to it. Look around for any food dropped somewhere.

Sam

Brodo Faggins wrote:

I imagine the smell in your room is god-awful, and you're just used to it. Look around for any food dropped somewhere.

scented candle.

and we have barely any floorspace, because we decided to de-loft our beds, so there isn't any food lying around.

Staleghoti

Clean

you friggin slob

Mr_Rose

You sure they're fruit flies? Cause I don't really see anything that small being a problem unless there's millions of them... An annoyance perhaps...

Anyway, fruit flies literally only eat fruit, hence the name. They also only lay their eggs in same, so if they're in your apartment, there's some fruit somewhere, or they think there is: Your scented candle, is it citrus? Change it for some vanilla or sandalwood...

PS Your only ventilation is an exterior grille/vent? Is that even legal?

Brodo Faggins

Mr_Rose wrote:

You sure they're fruit flies? Cause I don't really see anything that small being a problem unless there's millions of them... An annoyance perhaps...

Anyway, fruit flies literally only eat fruit, hence the name. They also only lay their eggs in same, so if they're in your apartment, there's some fruit somewhere, or they think there is: Your scented candle, is it citrus? Change it for some vanilla or sandalwood...

PS Your only ventilation is an exterior grille/vent? Is that even legal?

You'd be surprised at some of the shit colleges get away with. Some of the dorms on campus had asbestos up until two years ago.

Sam

You can open the window but there's a grill there, which is an offence to remove. It's mainly there to discourage smoking, which is retarded. (Not least because it doesn't work and people still smoke in their rooms)

And we don't have any fruit lying around. My roommate has had the occasional apple and orange laying on his table, but those are long gone by now, and the flies have lingered.

Casper

I used to live in army barracks and had a bad problem with them also, we found them living in the vents with all the mold. We ended up blocking off the conecting vents and purchased some of those fly strips. This reduced the bugs greatly, but unfortunetly when you live in a building like a dorm or a barracks sometimes they just get nasty and now matter how much you clean the bugs will always be there a little.

Raggaholic

If you have a fruit fly problem (which could be anything from actual fruit flies to a bunch of gnats), then there has to be a nest. My parents house got pretty infected once, and it turned out the nest was in a bag of potatoes that had long since been forgotten about under the kitchen sink.

It's time for you to get a pulse rifle, strap a flame thrower to it, and go looking for the queen and nest. In other words, clean up and you'll find the source.

Mishra

Bug bombs. Set off a bug bomb then clean the shit out of your room. You only have to be out of the room for 4 hours before you can air it out so set it off before class and then go back in. Be warned there will be fly corpses everywhere.

Retox

I had the a big problem with fruit flies a month or so ago. They we're living in our drain which had collected crap over the years. The best way to get rid of them quickly and without having to clean up bug corpses is to get a jar, any kind will work. Now get some apple cider vinegar, soem dish soap and a piece of fruit. Put the fruit in the bottom of the jar and pour about a quarter cup of the vinegar in there. Then pour in water until the piece of fruit is about 2/3 submerged. Put a couple drops of dish water in to break the surface tesion. Then make a cone out of a piece of paper so the small opening of the cone is about a half inch wide. Put the cone in the jar small opening down so that the opening is about an inch or two above the fruit. Now tape up the rim of the jar so the flies have to go through the paper cone to get to the fruit. Put the jar on a desk or something a watch the fly corpses accumulate.

This solved my fly problem in about a day. The jar smells a little vinegery so put it somewhere where you don't have to sit next to it all day.

aesir

sometimes they live in drains. They lived in the drains of the restaraunt I worked at, so we just flushed this bug murdering liquid down the drain everyday for a while.

Bendit

do you guys have plants in your room?

gnats will live in the plant dirt.

I use bright yellow flytraps for small gnats, works great.

Sam

aesir wrote:

sometimes they live in drains. They lived in the drains of the restaraunt I worked at, so we just flushed this bug murdering liquid down the drain everyday for a while.

We only have a tiny sink, and I don't think we have drain access, or if we do I don't thinkwe can access it without putting in a maintenance request.

do you guys have plants in your room?

gnats will live in the plant dirt.

I use bright yellow flytraps for small gnats, works great.

no

Sandis

I don't think bug bombs are intended for such a small room, but if you do go that route I would reccomend taking all your stuff out first, those things are nasty. They make bug sprays that can be sprayed into the center of the room in a similar fashion but less potent than a bug bomb, but with either route you need to be able to ventilate the room thoroughly after use.

Keep us updated, this was a problem in the break room at work and I didn't really find a good solution before the end of the summer

Anarchy Rules!

There is one species of fly that always return to one place to breed each year. They return to my house every year at around the end of summer, stay a few days then all die. It's a really old, draughty house which is probably the cause. It may just be a natural cycle for the flies to go to your particular dorm, or it might be that you're a total messy slob.

FishMist

Retox wrote:

I had the a big problem with fruit flies a month or so ago. They we're living in our drain which had collected crap over the years. The best way to get rid of them quickly and without having to clean up bug corpses is to get a jar, any kind will work. Now get some apple cider vinegar, soem dish soap and a piece of fruit. Put the fruit in the bottom of the jar and pour about a quarter cup of the vinegar in there. Then pour in water until the piece of fruit is about 2/3 submerged. Put a couple drops of dish water in to break the surface tesion. Then make a cone out of a piece of paper so the small opening of the cone is about a half inch wide. Put the cone in the jar small opening down so that the opening is about an inch or two above the fruit. Now tape up the rim of the jar so the flies have to go through the paper cone to get to the fruit. Put the jar on a desk or something a watch the fly corpses accumulate.

This solved my fly problem in about a day. The jar smells a little vinegery so put it somewhere where you don't have to sit next to it all day.

This worked for me too, except I used a beer bottle with a few leftover drops of beer still in it instead of vinegar/soap/fruit.

fforde

If you have people over and you are looking for a temporary solution to the annoyance of the flies, try leaving a glass of wine out. It wont get rid of the problem, but it will keep the flies out of your hair for a while...

vonPoonBurGer

Retox wrote:

I had the a big problem with fruit flies a month or so ago. They we're living in our drain which had collected crap over the years. The best way to get rid of them quickly and without having to clean up bug corpses is to get a jar, any kind will work. Now get some apple cider vinegar, soem dish soap and a piece of fruit. Put the fruit in the bottom of the jar and pour about a quarter cup of the vinegar in there. Then pour in water until the piece of fruit is about 2/3 submerged. Put a couple drops of dish water in to break the surface tesion. Then make a cone out of a piece of paper so the small opening of the cone is about a half inch wide. Put the cone in the jar small opening down so that the opening is about an inch or two above the fruit. Now tape up the rim of the jar so the flies have to go through the paper cone to get to the fruit. Put the jar on a desk or something a watch the fly corpses accumulate.

This solved my fly problem in about a day. The jar smells a little vinegery so put it somewhere where you don't have to sit next to it all day.

We did something similar to this at a bar where I used to work, but we used red wine instead of cider vinegar. Fruit flies literally cannot resist the smell of red wine. Instead of a paper cone, we used a piece of clingwrap, stretched it taut over the half-glass of red wine, and poked holes in it. The fruit flies can follow the scent of red wine to find the holes, but have no mechanism for finding their way back out. Note that you'll have to combine this wineglass trick with eradicating any potential breeding grounds. Otherwise, they may simply keep on hatchin'.

Pussum

Raggaholic wrote:

If you have a fruit fly problem (which could be anything from actual fruit flies to a bunch of gnats), then there has to be a nest. My parents house got pretty infected once, and it turned out the nest was in a bag of potatoes that had long since been forgotten about under the kitchen sink.

It's time for you to get a pulse rifle, strap a flame thrower to it, and go looking for the queen and nest. In other words, clean up and you'll find the source.

Same damn thing happened to me and my girl. We had a bag of taters sitting in one of those bins and had never thought to open it up to look. One annoying ass gnat after another started poping up. It was to the point that they were everywhere. On the tv, the mirrors, in the cupboards, kitchen, crawling on the furniture, bathrooms, everywhere! we ended up just going crazy turning everything upside down till I found it. Oh god smelled horrid and the nest covered two whole huge potato's. Sick! Also I heard a good way to catch those buggers is to get some apple vinager and some dishsoap. Pour it in a little cup and add a bit of water. The smell drives them nuts and they try to eat it and the soap grabs them and drowns them. good stuff.

ArbitraryDescriptor

Mr_Rose wrote:

Anyway, fruit flies literally only eat fruit, hence the name. They also only lay their eggs in same

Woefully false.

Fruit flys can live on an empty beer bottle/soda can, drain muck far longer than most people would be willing to wait. But then maybe those weren't really fruitflys that beset us that one time, I thought. Maybe he's right.

Nope

And once they're established in your house, they can sustain themselves on an impressive range of nutrients. They can live on the slime inside a sink drain. They can flourish on a sour mop. They'll eat damp flour or food fermenting quietly in a crack in the floor. They've even proven capable of existing on a diet of alcohol fumes, their bodies deploying a special chemical that converts the alcohol to nourishment before it can poison them.

Clean clean clean, certainly. But above all: Kill kill kill. They can live on shit you can barely taste, but they can't breed if they're dead.

ArbitraryDescriptor

Er, completely forgot suggested trap and link.

This sort of fecundity, however, is often a hallmark of small brains and a high death rate. Because they're slow to anticipate treachery, for instance, fruit flies are easy to trap. A wine bottle with a bit of fruit or wine in the bottom and a cone of paper set funnel-style in the top works brilliantly, though Cranshaw notes that the trap may also attract your victims' country cousins.

http://www.discovery.com/area/skinnyon/skinnyon970718/skinny1.html

Black Ice

There has to be a source of fruit. A few years ago, at my old house, we had a fruit fly infestation inside of the house. We could never figure out where the damn things came from.

Like 1-2 months went by, with multiple visits from the exterminator, and to no avail, the bastards were still flying around.

One day we found a banana hidden behind an unused recycle bin. Even though we swore we had no fruit, there was a nest of fruit flies on a piece of hidden fruit in our garage, with tons of the flies going inside of the house at random intervals (for a few weeks there were no flies and we thought we had gotten rid of them).

So basically what I'm saying is, although you can't find the fruit, there's probably a tiny piece of an apple or something feeding these asshole fruit flies in YOUR fucking house, scavage the place and show those motherfuckers who's boss

ArbitraryDescriptor

Seriously. Fruit is not required. They like yeast. Yeast happens to eat fruit, but it also lives on a lot of other things.

stigweard

These things are awesome. They last a month and will kill a couple of generations of those bastards.

Brodo Faggins

Also, you haven't told us how dirty your room is. You might think it's clean, but it's all relative, and it might really be a shithole. Post a picture.

Kewop Decam

I had a huge fruit fly problem a couple of months back. Talking like 20+ in the house at anytime for like two damn months. These bitches would be in the damn closets... there's nothing in there for them! According to the exterminator, there wasn't much we could do about it because it was just that time of the year. A certain time of the year we get an onslaught of spiders (I live in Florida, bug central).

Is it warm in your area? Also, check everywhere for like fruit or vegetables that may have been abandoned in a random corner of the room. One of the infestations I had was due to my roommate leaving a bag of onions in the drawer forl ike 8 months cause he's a fucking moron. They are persistant bastards and will get into any drawer or cabinet.

What I did to keep them at a lower rate was I threw out my garbage can and kept a small grocery bag as the kitchen garbage can. I did this so that no garbage could be left in the house longer than a couple hours to a day. I still do this now. Roommates are all like "why don't we have a garbage can" and I just reply with "go fucking buy one! The hell do I look like!? Your dad?" (sorry, dudes are annoying and they think just because my parents own the condo I should buy every random thing... kiss my ass).

minor threat

i had an epic battle with fruit flies all summer. fly strips work pretty well, even if they are slightly gross. i ended up using a bug bomb and it took care of the problem.

an interesting solution would be to buy a few venus fly traps. that'd be fun.