FRUIT & DRAIN FLIES

Fruit flies can seemingly appear out of thin air. Sometimes, all you have to do is remove a piece of fruit from the fridge and fruit flies will appear! They are both a nuisance and a contaminator of food. Large populations of them are be quickly established, especially in food service locations like bars, restaurants, wineries and other bottling plants.

For restaurant and bar owners/managers these flies pose a particular concern as they tend to hover directly over customers while they are eating. The most important thing to remember is that they can usually be controlled with improvements to sanitation. Fruit wedges, bottle caps, corks and bottles that fall beneath bar equipment are often a good place to start. Mops should be kept clean and dry as much as possible.

Here are a few fruit fly facts:

• Adult flies are 3mm long
• Their eyes are red and the abdomen is black on top and gray beneath
• Eggs are laid in fermenting materials like fruit, slime in drains and dirty garbage containers
• Larvae hatch from eggs in as little as 30 hours
• Adult females can lay 500 eggs
• They can fly up to 6-1/2 miles in a day

Drain flies (also known as Moth flies) are found in bathrooms, kitchens and basements and although they do not pose a threat to man they can become a visable nuisance to commercial businesses. Despite the fact that they breed in sewage, they do not transmit disease.

They are poor fliers and are often seen crawling or resting on surfaces. Habitat elimination and sanitation are  the key to removing these flies.