How to get rid of fruit flies and other common pests

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• If you wake up one morning to find a cloud of tiny flying insects teeming around your fruit basket, there is a good chance you have a fruit fly infestation.
• These small flying insects are a species of housefly strongly attracted by ripening or rotting fruits.
• Fortunately, it is usually not difficult to get rid of fruit flies and there is no need to resort to potentially toxic chemicals.
• Here's how to treat these pests, as well as two similar flying insects: mushroom midges and sewer flies.

At one point or another, almost everyone will have to deal with fruit flies. In turn, I let a peach ripen a little too long in the fruit basket, to go into the kitchen and discover a cloud of small flying insects hovering over the bowl and crawling on the fruit that I expected to savor with my lunch.

Since then, I've been careful to mix the fruits that have exceeded their peak, although in my fruit-intensive household, most of the products are consumed before that happens.

You can literally leave a pest-free kitchen in the morning and go home in the afternoon to find a cloud of fruit flies partying in your fruit basket. These tiny insects are powerfully attracted to the smell of rotting fruit and are small enough to slip directly into your window screen or into tiny cracks around windows or doors. You could also unknowingly bring fruit flies home with your produce from the farmers market or supermarket.

Once they have access to your kitchen, flies feast on overripe fruit. Of course, restoration is not all these pests have in their minds. They also make the bad guy in your fruit bowl. Then the female pierces the skin of the fruit to deposit up to 500 eggs.

The eggs hatch in less than 24 hours and the fruit provides food for the larvae. A few days later, the larvae pupate for a few days before emerging adults. In two days, adults are ready to enjoy cooking and the cycle is repeated. With an average lifespan of 40 to 50 days, it's a lot of fruit flies.

Now that you know where the fruit flies come from, we will explain how to eliminate them and how to eliminate other pests in the kitchen often confused with those of fruit flies.

Read on to learn how to get rid of fruit flies and other pests quickly and easily.