Getting Rid of Fruit Flies – A Preschool Science Experiment

I loathe fruit flies. All summer I was very particular about handling things in my kitchen to prevent their taking up residence there. I always place fruit waste in plastic grocery bags before putting them in the garbage, I run my disposal frequently, I cover the bananas in the bowl on my counter, etc.

We managed to avoid fruit flies for the summer. Then I don’t know what happened. Perhaps I got lax in my precautions (though I don’t think I did). We have had some of the disgusting and annoying little bugs flying around our house for the past week or so.

A couple of days ago, I enlisted the help of my two older girls to experiment with the best way to get rid of them.

In the past, I have tried various strategies to kill the flies, with not much success. This time I went to Pinterest to find some suggestions.

There were tons of them, but I picked out three different methods and some different substances to attract the flies. I reminded the girls what an experiment is. We talked about our different methods and the importance of both attracting the flies and trapping them. We discussed how each of our methods would try to accomplish these two goals.

The three methods we used (from left to right):

1. Wine in a bottle with a paper funnel.

2. Dish soap, apple cider vinegar, and water (with bubbles on top).

3. Apple cider vinegar and plastic wrap across the top with small holes.

I asked the girls to hypothesize which method would catch the most fruit flies.

 

Lass thought the wine with the funnel. Miss thought the soap/cider/water mixture (we had talked about how the flies would land on the soap and get stuck in the bubbles).

The results:

A discussion followed about the possible reasons that the vinegar/water/bubbles mixture caught so many more flies than the others. With some help, they came up with the hypothesis that the flies were able to smell/access that solution better because of the wide open top of the glass.

I could not quite believe that the wine was not a better lure, since my experience has been that any time I sit down with a glass of wine, if there is a fruit fly somewhere in our house, it will circle around my head and my glass for the entire evening as I try to sip and enjoy. So I suggested that we try a second test to see if the flies like cider vinegar or wine better.

 

I guess this was just crummy wine, because the cider vinegar/bubbles caught 11 flies, while the wine/bubbles caught only one.

So, if you ever have fruit flies, take it from us with our fancy preschool science experiment, and use our winning method: two squirts of dish soap, water to make bubbles (about half of the glass) and then about the same amount of apple cider vinegar.

It was fun for the girls to check each morning to see how many flies had been caught by each method. Miss was especially into it. Lass, my sweet, sensitive girl, seemed to be in denial about the demise of the bugs on the bottom of the glass. “I think they’re just taking a bath,” she said, as I poured them down the drain.