Help! Fruit flies in your Brykkar?!

The common fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) is a two-winged insect (Source: Wikipedia ). If these late summer annoyances have also reached your kitchen or you have even found some in your Brykkar, we will give you some advice on how to avoid such a situation.

To begin with, we explain that fruit flies come from the outdoors to the smell of fruit and food , because they are attracted to the smells of fermentation and spoilage (Source: Taltech ). All kinds of loose fruit, fumes from cooking jam and juice, and sweet drinks attract them, creating a pleasant environment for fruit flies.

Fruit flies have a short life cycle and reproduce very quickly under favorable conditions. A female fly mates once in her lifetime and then lays about 300 eggs. The egg stage is followed by three vagal stages: first, second and third stage vagal. Then the pupation takes place and then the ready comes again. The entire life cycle lasts only nine days at 25 degrees Celsius (Source: Taltech ).

 The Brykkar bio-waste box remains free of fruit flies if:

• you empty the organic waste bin regularly (at least over a day)
• you clean the Brykkar after each emptying, including washing all surfaces with a cloth and rinsing all the contents (also from under the contents bucket)
• you use household paper at the bottom of the content bucket, thanks to which the content bucket becomes significantly less dirty (or you use a biodegradable plastic bag in the content bucket)
• do not store fruit or sweet drinks on kitchen surfaces (I also recommend keeping apples in the refrigerator)
• you regularly clean the kitchen surfaces
• you use traps if necessary if there are already too many fruit flies. Here , here and here you can find some ideas for making homemade traps

How do we take care of our Brykkari?

• In this warm early autumn, we are still emptying the Brykkar more than a day on average (because we are big cooks).
• We use household paper at the bottom of the content bucket.
• We rinse the contents of the bucket under the tap after each emptying
• We clean the surfaces of Brykkar daily (often when chopping, something still flies to the side of Brykkar, etc.)
• If we know we'll be leaving home for at least 2 or more days, we empty the Brykkar and clean all the contents a little more thoroughly (ie the surface under the contents bucket too)

Photo source: BBC .