Catching Flies with Vinegar

There's an old expression, “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” Not true; I tried it.

I've had a bit of a problem with fruit flies around my desk at work lately, and even have my bananas inside a storage container to keep them away. This afternoon I noticed the container had a couple dozen fruit flies crawling all over it. They couldn't get inside at the bananas, but that didn't stop them from congregating there anyway.

One of the guys at work recently dubbed an old bottle of vinegar to be a “Fly Trap” bottle so I opened it and sat it on top of my banana box. Then, remembering that expression, I grabbed a plate, smeared some honey on it, and set it up next to the vinegar. Well what do you know, after several minutes there were flies all over the bottle, and only one crawling on the plate (and it wasn't anywhere near where the honey was).

It would appear that whoever first came up with that expression had no idea what they were talking about.

But attracting flies and catching flies are two different matters. It doesn't seem like simply setting out vinegar will actually catch them, and it'll need to be just part of the bait in some other sort of trap. I poured some vinegar into the bottle's lid and, while lots of flies were crawling on it, none actually ventured into the vinegar itself where they would drown. So now I'm worried that, tomorrow morning, I'll have a really massive infestation around my desk thanks to the vinegar. Fortunately I've found several promising fruit fly trap ideas online that I'll have to give a try in the morning...