PEST PROSpectives

The Gross Truth About What's Really Flying Around Your Bananas

• Pest Pros of Michigan

Share episode

Tony Sorrentino, Associate Certified Entomologist at Pest Pros of Michigan, is back with us on this episode of PEST PROSpectives and reveals the surprising truth about fruit flies and their household cousins.

Most people don't realize that fruit flies aren't just attracted to the bowl of ripening bananas on your counter. Tony explains where they really hang out, what some of the health concerns can be, and how residents and professionals can address the problem. 

Subscribe to PEST PROSpectives where you get podcasts.

Episode Resources
Pest Pros of Michigan

PEST PROSpectives is a Livemic Communications production.

Richard Piet:

I'm Richard Piet. Welcome back to PEST PROSpectives from the Pest Pros of Michigan. Today. Tony Sorrentino is back with us again, associate certified entomologist at pest pros, to talk about these pesky little things. We call them fruit fruit flies. Hi, Tony, hey Richard, how are you? Great. Actually, fruit flies and other small flies is going to lead to a wider ranging discussion, I suppose, about these small pests. They do seem to be pesty, don't they? You might have some fruit out on the counter or something maybe sweet, and they're attracted to that. Is that right?

Tony Sorrentino:

Yeah, it's not just fruit, I know the name implies. When we're dealing with small flies, it's really, really important that we're positively identifying what type of fly it is, because it could lead back to what the source of the flies is. Source of the flies is the fruit. Flies are attracted to fermenting fruits or sugary residues, wine bottles, pop cans, mop buckets, standing water in cups in the sink or in bowls in the sink and, of course, drains.

Richard Piet:

There's that gradu, and I lovingly refer to it as gradu that muck that builds up in your drains and that's the breeding heaven for these things. Okay, so if we have something sweet out on the counter, they might already be in the drain and all of a sudden the nose knows and out they come.

Tony Sorrentino:

They're living and existing, so the source might be the drain, but their secondary infestation on the fruit, tertiary infestation in the pop cans underneath the sink. So it's really an awareness thing, it's a sanitation thing.

Richard Piet:

Wow, okay, so we would then call this an environmental kind of, I guess, infestation. But they're around.

Tony Sorrentino:

They come because they sense that sweet stuff that they're interested in Right Rotting produce, food scraps left in the garbage. The garbage disposal is a huge one. They lay their eggs on moist, decaying organic matter and the life cycle is about seven to 10 days from egg to adult, and one female can lay four to 500 eggs per day. Oh my goodness, we can go from nothing to something ridiculous. 20,000, 50,000 fruit flies with enough decaying organic matter in the time span of six weeks, eight weeks.

Richard Piet:

You know, I've had this happen once and I had some ripening fruit on the counter and I put out I don't remember what it was a glass of something sweet, it might have been juice of some kind and they were attracted to that and then they disappeared. So if you do that and you don't see them anymore, I guess this means they may not be gone right.

Tony Sorrentino:

They just show up, they're opportunistic and, like I said, there's multiple areas of the house where they could be Sometimes breaks down to. Like I said earlier, it's a sanitation issue.

Richard Piet:

So are they harmful? Here's the real question we want answered, right? They seem harmless, are they?

Tony Sorrentino:

I don't like flies because, like I said, they lay their eggs and are born and live on decaying organic matter. They lay their eggs and are born and live on decaying organic matter, so that's septic. I don't want that to come land on the rim of my glass or be buzzing around me and touching my food, or even landing anywhere where I might put something down that I'm going to be eating off of. In restaurant environments and home environments there are traffickers of septic material to aseptic environments.

Richard Piet:

Well, I guess it's not too much of a stretch that if they're hanging out in the sludge in your drain or in your garbage disposer, that when they pick up and leave they're not necessarily leaving all of that behind, you can understand how that could carry along and land wherever it is that they land. And I don't mean to gross anybody out here, but if they're attracted to the fruit that's ripening on your counter and they leave the sludge in your drain and then land on that fruit and then take off and you come along and grab that fruit and yeah, those aren't the only small flies that we deal with Like.

Tony Sorrentino:

There's also drain flies and that can be a signal, depending on where you're seeing them in your house, that you have a septic or a sewer issue or a broken pipe somewhere. And the same thing with ford flies, which is another small humpback fly. They run more than they fly. They're often seen near floor drains or broken pipes or contaminated organic waste, and they're especially problematic in commercial kitchens and healthcare settings. So knowing what they are, knowing what we're looking at, knowing where they come from, is going to be 90% of the battle.

Richard Piet:

So what do we do about them? Is there something that we should do initially as homeowners before we call you, or is it impossible to do without the full on pest pros?

Tony Sorrentino:

treatment. The inspection is going to be everything Like if you can isolate, if you can by the process of elimination, if you can single out what's happening and where, if you're getting closer to the source of what's happening, there will be more flies present. I see one over here by the window, but I also see three more by the sink. And if I open up the doors under the sink and there's an onion underneath there that's rotting and there's 750 flies underneath there plus larva, then I know that if I take that out of there, I got it. So it's a typical process of elimination.

Tony Sorrentino:

If it is an ongoing issue with drains, then that would more times than not require professional assistance. Sometimes it's an awareness, sometimes it's a sanitation issue, sometimes it's you know, I've been in houses where I've walked in and there's a rotten pear in the bottom of the fruit bowl and nobody knew about it. You know, I asked my kids to throw that away a week ago. A lot of things happen and there's a lot of things that you can do for long-term control. One of them is going to be keeping your drains clean and dry. You're going to store your produce in the fridge or in sealed bins where the fruit flies can't get to it. At my house I take out my trash daily because I have a pile of kids too and they like to throw away half-eaten food, and that turns into an issue.

Richard Piet:

If it is a fruit thing, let's just say, or the onion under the sink. Is it possible that we remove all of that? And we think we've solved the problem, but they really have retreated back into the drain.

Tony Sorrentino:

If they're still present in the drain. Like I said, it may require the use of a stronger hand to get after them, because some people think that pouring the bleach down in there or pouring hot water down in there would finish that or solve that. In some cases that may work. In other cases they are living above where the P-trap comes down and goes back up over before it drains out. Yeah, that water line in the bottom of the P-trap and they'll be above that. So when you pour the bleach down there and it flushes out, it doesn't ever get to where they're at and they're living on that gradu like it's the coast.

Richard Piet:

The warm coast Tropical paradise, yeah, tropical paradise for them. All right. So the inspection, as you say, makes a lot of difference. So if somebody sees a few around, what's the first thing you think they should do? Try to identify what might be attracting them, remove that and see what happens. Yep.

Tony Sorrentino:

I remove and monitor, I adjust what's happening and make adjustments to what's going on around it and just see what can be done without the use of any chemicals, because in a lot of cases, like we had just talked about, sometimes a minor correction can make a big difference.

Richard Piet:

So what will pest bros do then? If what we might try to do to flush the drain doesn't work, how do you do it so?

Tony Sorrentino:

we use a variety of different foaming agents. We have one that's a bioenzymatic foaming agent that will clean out that gradu. And there's another product that we use called Nybor D, and it's a ready to use foam and that's from the nicest corporation and it's got the active ingredients in it, but it's still safe to use in drains. So it's got a disodium octoborate tetrahydrate in it, which is the active ingredient in it. It damages the digestive tract of the insects that are living and feeding off that gradu. Say that name three times fast, by the way. Yeah, man, I can rattle them off every once in a while. I got them in there.

Richard Piet:

All right, so does it actually clean the beach, the passageway?

Tony Sorrentino:

as well it does. Actually, the bioenzymatic agent in it actually cleans it out and breaks down that organic gross yeah.

Richard Piet:

All right. So if you're seeing fruit flies, there's Tony's advice First try to isolate what might be attracting them and then, if they're still hanging around or you might just want to have a professional come and get that foaming agent going and make sure everything's clean down that drain. Pest Pros is prepared to help with that. Thank you, tony. Get those flies out of there. Enjoy your fruit without any concerns in this way and they will be glad to help. By the way, we talk about these and other subjects as it relates to pests on Pest Prospectives from the Pest Pros of Michigan. We sort of play around with the spelling of that P-E-S-T-P-R-O-S Prospectives. So look for Pest Prospectives, where you get podcasts, and we invite you to subscribe to this one and we'll be back with more with Tony and others, the pros in Pest Pros. Thanks Tony, thanks Richard.