I test 3 different liquids to lure fruit flies to the trap: Apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, and red wine. The result...apple cider vinegar is by far the best liquid to use.
The text from the video:
How to catch fruit flies. What is the best liquid to use. An experiment: A fruit fly trap.
I'm going to use 3 different liquids to attract the fruit flies. Plain white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and inexpensive red wine. I'll put the same amount of liquid into 3 identical bowls. I'll also use an overripe banana skin as bait. (Actually, I moved the test outdoors so the skin wasn't used.)
The "magic" ingredient is liquid soap; 3 drops into each bowl. Most people in this part of the world have seen an insect on lakes and rivers...we call them water spiders. The reason they seem to skate over water, instead of sinking, is because of "surface tension". Adding a certain amount of liquid soap reduces the surface tension of the water. This is water happens in fruit fly traps. The flies land on or walk into the soapy water to feed. But rather than staying on the surface they sink. Buh-bye fly.
Because my composter has 100's of fruit flies in it this time of year, I set the traps on top of a screen to
dramatize the effectiveness of the traps using different liquids. The time lapse covers approximately 100 minutes.
Since the red wine is so dark, I strained it to remove the bugs.
The cider vinegar seems to exclusively attract fruit flies. Not only that, it appears to have attracted 5 to 6 times as many fruit flies as the other liquids. Surprisingly, the plain white vinegar lured the fewest
number of fruit flies. It did attract 3 larger flies though. The red wine attracted a third of what the apple cider vinegar did. And it attracted a wasp and a larger fly besides the fruit flies. (Note: I added water to the bowl.)
The Conclusion: A fruit fly trap using apple cider vinegar is a much more successful attractant than using red wine or plain white vinegar. Much better.
