What are fruit flies?
Fruit flies (sometimes spelled “fruitflies”) are also known as “vinegar flies”, “pomace flies”, “nuisance flies”, “shoo flies” and even “sweat flies”, but will simply be referred to as “pest” if you find yourself swatting them away. If you’ve ever left fruit, wine, or baked goods out for a few days (or didn’t empty the garbage), especially if the window is open a little, you’ve probably seen them. If you left the food out a few more days, you’ve likely seen swarms. They are a tiny fly (for Latin buffs: Drosophila Melanogaster) which gathers on the aforementioned foods and are most recognizeable by their itsy-bitsy red eyes. Fruitflies reproduce very rapidly, so in short order you can have hundreds of little flies swarming around your food. They live for about a month, so if you remove all the food sources and make sure everything is clean but DON’T place a trap, the small flies will just disperse all over your house in their search for more food.
