fruit flies

[Dave]

Is this mass invasion going on across the whole of the county? I have never seen as many as this year. Shit flies and wasps look to have abandoned us this year.

Dave

[Andy Burns]

No fruit flies here in the middle bit.

I must have had a wasp nest somewhere closeby (as close as the loft perhaps) judging by the number that have drowned themselves in the bog in the last month.

[Ericp]

Never see any here, just bluebottles and mossies.

[Phil L]

I'm assuming you're in the North of the country? - everyone around here has been innundated with these little bastards all summer - fly spray does nothing to them.....I googled and found some ideas about making traps, so i made one and caught about 50 in one day. It was basically a jar with a cone made from card taped around the top, inside the jar was a chopped up tomato and a tablespoon of cider - they get in through a small hole at the pointy end of the cone but can't find their way out afterwards.

Must admit, they seem to have dissapeared in the past week or two, or at least there's not as many

[Dave]

Yes, Lancashire.

Nice, I'll try that next year.

We are still inundated with them, there must have been about 8 to 10 trying to get into a banana this morning.

Thanks to all for the info, it looks like a North West thing then.

Dave

[Spamlet]

Apart from the obvious clouds of them in the compost bin, our fruit flies come with the bananas in our organic veg box every other week.

Henry the vacuum cleaner with the 'behind the settee cushions' adaptor, is the easiest way to catch them.

Tried various trap mixtures for them but they never seem to work for long.

(The little black 'soil flies' that are slimmer than the Drosophila are even harder to catch though...)

S

[John Rumm]

Not seen any down this way...

I know where yours went for a holiday then! Been swamped with bleeding things this year. (bought one of those electrified tennis racquet type things - at least you can get some satisfying snap, crackle, and smoke out of them!)

[Mike Barnes]

Dave :

Not here in Cheshire. Lots of plums and blackberries, though.

[Dave]

Thanks for taking them on board. You are not thinking of sending them back again, are you? :-))

Dave

[Dave]

That was an interesting point, you are not that far South of me. I live not very far South of Preston, Lancs.

Just opened a new shrink wrapped bag of Winward Isle bananas and I would swear that a fruit fly came out of the bag :-((

Dave

[AL_n]

Dave wrote in news:i7iiqo$e6b$ [e-mail]- september.org:

That's very possible. "Time flies like and arrow, and fruit flies like bananas..." ;-)

Al

[John Rumm]

Electrocuted most of em... still want them?

[Dave]

No thanks, we don't have anything growing in the garden since we put Staffordshire pink all over the front and back gardens. :-)

Dave