Why Do I Have Fruit Flies In My Charlotte, NC Home?

Sometimes fruit flies are drawn into a garage first. If you have recycling items in your garage, the scent can attract these flies, especially beer and wine containers. Fruit flies may also be attracted to trash bins that are kept in the garage. They can breed in the organic matter in your trash.

The scent of fermentation brings fruit flies close to your home. As they explore the source of the smells, they can find breeding sites such as exterior trash bins or compost. If they do, they can reproduce near your home and increase the potential for problems in your home since they are able to go right in through your door when you go in or out.

Fruit Fly Development

Once inside your home, a fruit fly can find many places to lay eggs and it can lay as many as 500 eggs at a time. So it only takes one fly to create a swarm of flies.

• The eggs hatch into larvae.
• The larvae feed on the food source the eggs were deposited in, such as a dollop of ketchup on a paper plate in the trash or a piece of fruit sitting on the kitchen table.
• In three days, the larvae can become pupae.
• In under three days, the pupae can become adult flies and take to the air. 

The entire life cycle can take place in about a week. If you don't remove trash from your kitchen weekly, fruit flies can use it as a breeding site. This might be why you have a swarm of fruit flies in your Charlotte home. If you display fruit on your kitchen table or island rather than putting it in the refrigerator, this may also be why you're seeing a lot of fruit flies. But these two breeding sites are far from the only places fruit flies can breed in your home.

Sometimes Fruit Flies Hitchhike

You can purchase produce from the store that already has eggs. These eggs can sit without hatching because they're refrigerated before these products get to your home. In the warm temperatures of your home, the eggs hatch. They may also hatch when activated by the ripening of the produce. Within a short time, you can have more than a hundred flies zipping around inside your home. That's why these flies are so mysterious.