June 8, about 5 weeks in, fruit flies

[Paponda]

fruit flies. yuck. How do I get rid of them? Everything after the initial feeding of the bin, before the worms arrived, has been frozen and thawed to kill fruit fly larvae, or so I thought.

Thanks in advance for your help in this matter. :)

[Paponda]

Thanks everybody! We're fly-free!

[Jeffrey J. Schaefer]

I have a recyclable fruit fly trap video posted here on the site or you can go to youtube.com and search fruit fly traps and see numerous videos on how to make some including mine. Burying the food better works the best.

[Susan W]

Do what Laurel says, and:
Add nematodes to your bin--they feast on fruit fly larvae.
Stop adding any citrus peels--bananas, oranges, etc. Fruit fly eggs in the peels. This regimen has eradicated the fruit fly issue for us.

[Susan Bolman]

Laurel said everything I would have and better. If I'd tried to answer, it would have been pages long. :-) I hope the trap and covering of bedding helps! Let us know.

[Laurel]

Gonna echo Jason a little bit here -- there are four keys to fruit fly management and prevention:
1) Freezing (you've got this down!)
2) Bury food scraps deep (6 inches is supposed to be best, not always possible in stacking bins though)
3) Don't overfeed and mind what you feed (rotting fruit attracts flies)
4) Trap the buggers (if all else fails)

I make a trap using an empty small plastic water bottle. Cut it in half, put a little bit of juice in the bottom half (I add a drop of dish soap, too, to break the surface tension), flip the top half upside down so it looks like a funnel, and put the top half inside the bottom half. Optional: tape them together. Flies go in the top opening and can't get out, drowning.

I find it helpful to cackle with glee over their little corpses. Wash the whole contraption out about every week or more as needed, refilling with juice.

[Jason]

They may have found their own way in. Those things get everywhere.

I keep a mason jar with an inch of cider vinegar and some holes poked in the top next to my bin and it's caught a lot of flies in its time. That's definitely a good thing to start. I've never had a real infestation, and if you add a lot of bedding on top of your bin so the flies have a tough time getting down to the food, and you have a trap that's easy to get into, you'll have far fewer breeding fruit flies.