How do I get rid of fruit flies in my fridge?

Question

Sorry in advance if this is the wrong place to post this.

In my fridge there are scores of dead fruit flies lying on the bottom. I rarely see any live ones in or outside the fridge, but, daily, there are dozens of dead ones both in the main part of the fridge and freezer compartment.

I've taken apart the seals and cleaned them to no affect. I've tried the juice and liquid soap trick and caught none at all. I've cleaned the fridge too, of course.

None are on any of the food in the fridge either. It's like my fridge is the elephant graveyard of fruit flies - they just go there to die.

Would anyone know how I could get rid of them?

Answer 1

The fruit flies have laid eggs somewhere in your fridge. If there are any drain traps or any extra covers for electric/whatever take them off. Spray the entire fridge with a spray cleaner that has bleach. Then unplug fridge and let it dry out.

If during the exercise you find holes that are good possibilities of breeding grounds, plug them with tape. We find fridges that are very usable in this state very often during flips and the first things we do is bleach the inside (409 makes a spray and a gel that works good - the gel on the bottom). After it sits for a day we clean with soap and water and let it dry. Then plug it in and almost all of the time - given seals are good never - no insect issues.

Answer 2

It's fruit fly season, again.

The flies are in some sort of bag or container in your fridge. If there is a bag of black liquid in there, chances are that's where they were bred. If you have an open can of veg or fruit they were bred in there. Take everything out of the fridge and you will find something disgusting in there. You'd be surprised what they can reproduce in. They are not only attracted to fruit but anything decomposing, like meat. Once you find the source, dispose of it outside in the garbage can.

Then use a dry paper towel to sweep out the dead bugs onto a paper plate or something else easily put into the trash and get them outside into the trash can because the cold might have put them in suspended animation and once warm they can swarm your home. Go disinfect your refrigerator with a solution of water and white vinegar (ratio of water to vinegar formula available online, somewhere) so your refrigerator has no toxic chemical in there and is clean and sweet-smelling but not the kind of sweet that attracts bugs. White vinegar is a perfectly effective and safe means of house cleaner. Obviously, your fly traps need to be IN the refrigerator back in a corner out of the way and out of your sight, not out on the counter as you don't see them outside the fridge.

Oh, and for your piece of mind, fruit and veg come already loaded with the little darlings; they don't just materialize out of nowhere and they don't migrate over the miles to you from the farms because you're dirty. The protein in fruit and vegetables is probably due to the fruit flies already being in the food waiting to be released once we take the fruit and veg home from the store. We most likely eat a certain amount of fruit fly larvae which is microscopic and allowed by the FDA.

Good luck!

Answer 3

I like to spray alcohol on fruit when I bring it home from the supermarket, it seems to eradicate the unhatched.

Answer 4

I learned from university about fruit flies . . . for some reason they go into a state of inactivity or cryogenics and they are not dead. They come back to life to give us hell when they are ready and who knows when they decide to do that. But for sure if they can stand that much cold i wouldn't doubt their intelligence of breeding in the cold too. Fruit flies are immensely intelligent which is why scientists study them. Cryogenics is something else.

Answer 5

Mary Angela, You are 100% correct, these flies are not dead. Upon finding a dozen or so dead (or so I thought) right in front where the fridge doors open, several times a day, I found myself standing there with my fridge doors wide open as I went over everything I could think of as being the cause, this of course being After I had already thrown away most of the food, took the fridge apart twice to clean each shelf, all the drawers, walls, you name it, yet here they are again. Anyway standing with the doors open, just kinda stareing in disbelief, for a good 20 minutes, I happened to have seen one dead fly move. As I didn't actually want to kill the fly but didn't want it in my fridge, I kinda made the shoo motion with my hand to wave the fly out of the fridge, The force of the air was enough to cause a couple of the other dead flies to kinda slide a bit then lo and behold, apparently the warm air from the fridge being open and the slide from the air produced by the "shoo" of my hand, was enough to wake them up, so several of them, on their own, clumsily stumbled back into life much like I stumbled upon these posts, lol.