A glass of cider vinegar mixed with some water and a few drops of dish soap will also do the trick.

Yup, or beer/fruit juice etc. To improve effectiveness- put the mix in a jar with plastic wrap over the top. Wrap an elastic around it to keep it in place. Poke several holes in the top. Fruit flies get in there easily, but have a harder time getting out and are more likely to get stuck in the solution.

I had the same happy accident, but mine was an all but emtpy half gallon bottle of raspberry vodka. Big Tall bottle with narrow neck at the top, near nothing got out once they went in. It was sitting with the other recycling waiting to be dealt with after a camping trip (which means it sat for a few days before I got around to looking at it). Now I save those empty half gallons just for that use, keep one around the compost bin etc.

How can you explain having fruit flies but no fruit (NONE) or food laying out. My kitchen as well as the rest of my house is spotless but I have an extremely HARD time getting rid of these fruit flies. Can someone please help me. I have a hard time dealing with this as well as my family.

My mother had the same problem. Are the fruit flies a little bigger and blacker than 'normal?'

We never figured out how to get rid of them, but we did suspect that they were coming in the vent through the kitchen.

I've had a similar problem with bees, through the vent. maybe there is residue in the vent that attracts them. Maybe check the vent area for gaps?

Well, out of desperation I found that placing a banana peel in the microwave for a while, then closing the door and... well you get the idea.

Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit likes like a banana.

Wayne

Well, nothing like blowing the punch line.

Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.

~ Groucho Marx

Wayne

I suspect that the flies coming from the drain are not fruit flies at all, but 'drain flies'. They live moist environments, and feed on organic matter (like the stuff that collects in drains). Perhaps ms.t critters are the same thing. They are more common than you would think.

Keeping drains cleaned with treatments of vinegar and baking soda will help.

Here is a link that might be useful: Drain flies

Dump a good quantity of boiling water down there. Not sure it will solve the problem permanently, but it would be satisfying.

Are you sure they are not fungus gnats?

Tempus Fugit (time flies)
Banana Fugit (fruit flies)

Similar problem....was the fruit, then the drain, now the compost bin. I'm going to try the alchahol idea to treat the symptoms. But I'm more interested in what I can do to prevent the nesting in my drain and compost bin. I read on the internet that DF - 5000 drain cleaner prevents further infestation and it's supposed to be safe. But I can't seam to figure out how safe.

Any ideas on safty of drain cleaners and how to prevent flies from infesting your compost bin in the first place?

Cheers,
-steph

Fruit flies will only develop and become a progblem if there is over ripe fruit around, in the absence of fruit they will not be present.
Fungus Gnats and/or grain moths may be mistaken for fruit flies but if normal sanitation is practiced none of these should be hatching from your waste drains. Simply rinsing your hands under running water is enough to flush any insect eggs that might possibly have been deposited in your waste pipes away.

kimmsr,
I'm not sure that is completely true since I once had to help some one fix a problem of little gnats coming out of a bathroom sink overflow. In most normal situations it is not easy to flush that part of the drain system. To deal with the problem I had to pull the stopper out of the sink and stuff something down to effectively plug the overflow as well as the sink and then we filled the sink to drown the suckers.

If you have a double sink in the kitchen, you might have a similar situation going on if that second sink doesn't get used much.

Gnats need organic matter to grow into maturity on. Drains should not have organic matter in them. Organic matter in waste pipes should get flushed out at least daily just by normal use. The only time I have ever seen gnats grow in a waste pipe is when the garbage disposer was not maintained properly.

Cider Vinegar/water/dishsoap worked like a CHARM! Thanks, all!

I tried a lot of different 'traps' and this one was by far and wide the best.

The Plum wine must be a fruit fly aphrodesiac (sic). Here's a 2 minute video on how to make the trap: http://youtu.be/N5ZFV-nGnEs

Let me know if this worked for you

What ratio do I use for the cider vinegar mixture?

Drain flies that I know of are alot bigger than a fruit fly. The ones I'm thinking of have black wings and look like a minature fly.

An old post that should not have been resurrected. However, perhaps this link might be of some help.
When queried the search engine came back with some 5,000,000 hits, most of which appear to be nonsense.

Here is a link that might be useful: drain flies

http://suburbanturmoil.com/how-to-get-rid-of-fruit-flies/