How to Make Your Own Fruit Fly Trap Out of Everyday Household Items

Fruit flies can be very annoying, not to mention unsanitary, in your home kitchen, and especially in summer, it seems like they come from out of nowhere. Here is a how to guide for making your own virtually free fruit fly trap to capture and kill flies.

The ingredients for this how to guide can be found around your house, and you shouldn't have to buy anything.

What You Will Need:

- An empty bottle made out of either glass or plastic (preferably see-through so you can see how many flies you've caught)

- Scotch tape

- A piece of paper

- Red wine, white wine, or soda

- a small piece of fruit, such as orange or banana (banana is best, since it's the most fragrant)

Step 1: Fill the empty glass or plastic bottle (such as a clear or tinted beer bottle or a Coke bottle) with a little bit of red wine (this will help attract the fruit flies that are in your kitchen).

Step 2: Cut up a bit of banana or another fruit and put it in the bottom of the bottle with the wine (this will further help to attract the fruit flies). Soda works too, but not quite as well.

Step 3: Pour a small amount of dishwasher detergent on into the bottle (this will help get the fruit flies stuck on the surface of the mixture in the bottle so they can't get out).

Step 4: Roll up a piece of paper into a cone shape, so that there is a tiny hole at the end of the cone. The hole should be a little bit bigger than a pinhole-- just big enough so that a tiny little fruit fly can get into it. Use a piece of scotch tape to hold the cone together so that it won't fall apart.

Step 5: Put the small end of your paper cone that you just made into the bottle with the banana, dishwasher soap and wine. This will act like a funnel so that it's easy for fruit flies to get in, but much harder for them to get out (in fact, it's nearly impossible). You can then use a piece of tape to make sure that your paper funnel will not fall off of the top of the bottle.

Step : Set your fruit fly trap out in the kitchen in the area that the flies are gathered. This is often near the garbage can or the sink. Throw the whole thing away after a week or two once all the fruit flies that you've caught have died.

Bonus tip: In order to discourage fruit flies from coming back in the future, be sure not to leave food or empty food containers out on your counters in the future. Also, using a trash can with a lid in the kitchen, or keeping your trash can inside a cabinet can help.