Kitchen Battle: the Dark-bellied Dew Lover
After coming home from a weekend trip i discovered an insane swarm of fruit flies in our basement… ew.
It turns out that my 4 year old decided to take a half bag of red grapes and store them in his play kitchen shelf. After probably a week, these red grapes became little, yellow, shrivelled food and breeding medium for my nemisis, the red eyed, long winged, drosophola melongaster – the “dark-bellied dew lover”.
Experiments in biology class in highschool introduced me to this harmless, yet highly annoying pest and its traits and super efficient gestation cycles and many years of operating a restaurant bar gave me years of experience in controling them. I have become a quasi-expert over the years.
In this biology class lab in highschool, we were partnered up with another classmate and bred these flies in a medium in test tubes then knocked them out with ether (my job) and examined thier traits to record and discern their dominant and recessive traits (her job).
My lab partner was the smartest person in class – i thought i was set. My problem was that every time i had to anesthetize them with the ether, i killed them. Not so good with portioning back then i suppose! I think this is some kind of cosmic karma coming back on me, a curse if you will, to remind me of my uninintentional insecticide.
Getting rid of the dark-bellied dew lover is not an easy task. Eventually without any food or medium to reproduce in, they will die off. However, these resilient little buggers can eat almost any crumbs or juice to survive… and it doesnt take much.
Other than a fun little device we discovered in a closet at a house we rented last summer – a battery powered, electric, tennis racket shaped bug zapper – this is the most efficient way to control their spread. Not as immediately gratifying, but just as rewarding. Trust me.
The idea is simple… a container with bait inside and a plastic wrap sheet over top held on with an elastic to trap them in and utilizing peices of a straw cut into little tubes as entry points. They smell the bait inside, enter the little straw peices to get in there and once inside simply cant find their way out. I have observed them many times and i have YET to see one find its way back out. Stupid dew lovers.
Now, the bait is the key to this equation. We did experiments with red wine, white wine, vermouth, beer, fruit and mixtures of them. After all the testing this is the deal… a few small peices of very ripe or even slightly rotten fruit sitting in an inch or so of beer or white wine works the best. Beer took top honours here but white wine is not far off. The fruit didnt seem to matter as much as long as it was very ripe to rotten so it gave off the smells of its sugars.
When i see them starting, i place three of these devices in different “problem areas” in my kitchen (sink mainly) and within 3 days, they are done. Simply empty out the containers OUTSIDE if possible and wash. There is one catch you have to think about though… if you have ANY fruit or vegetables sitting out in the vicinity, they wont go to the traps. You may have to stick your watermelon and pineapple in the fridge until they are gone… dont put your tomatoes in the fridge though – they suck after going in the fridge. They are prefect as they are. If you have to, put them in a bowl and cover it with a dry dishcloth to throw them off.
I hope you dont need these devices but if you do, have fun. It is sickly satisfying watching them buzz around in there, over satiated in their greed of tormenting your forbidden fruit. Happy hunting!
