Everyone has some experience with those pesky little fruit flies that like to swarm around our kitchens, particularly near the recycle bin, trash can, and where you keep fresh fruit and vegetables. My boyfriend Nick’s apartment is no exception, and he has a decent amount of those buggers and they are the most annoying part of his apartment in my opinion (there’s several annoying parts, its a basement apartment, has no air conditioning, etc.).

Fruit flies are typically an issue in the summer/fall months, and start their reproductive cycle around your produce (that’s what the baby fruit flies eat once the larvae hatch). The total lifespan of a fruit fly from birth to death is about one week, but they can have up to 500 siblings born at the same time (which explains why it seems like there’s a never-ending stream of them!). Although fruit flies are normally just pests, they do have the potential to carry bacteria and contaminate your food (Potter para 4).

So, in order to get rid of these pests, my boyfriend, being the most innovative person I know, decided to create his own trap using a plastic cup, a banana peel, saran wrap, and some duct tape.

He placed a banana peel inside the solo cup, put a piece of saran wrap on top, taping it to the cup to make sure it stayed in place, and poked small holes in the saran wrap. The small holes let the fruit flies enter (they can detect the rotting banana peel), but it will not let them escape. After a day or so, the cup had a decent amount of fruit flies in it, and the kitchen was no longer home to 50 or so flying guests! 

Nick was also a former student of Andrew’s; he took Science 200 in Fall of 2010! He is now a law student, but his innovation in solving the fruit fly debacle makes me think he should have majored in Entomology.