One of the most important activities you can undertake in our quest for a Fruitfly free Koraleigh, is installing and managing fruitfly traps on your property. You can do this even if you don’t have fruit trees, and if you do the rest of us will be very grateful.
Currently, we are using two types of trap. Both work on the principle of emitting pheremones, or scents, that attract either female fruitfly or male fruitfly.
The female trap (Bio Trap) uses a gel at the bottom as the phermone lure, baited with an insecticidal cube. The male trap (Pro Trap) uses a pheremonal lure impregnated in a circular wick along with an insecticide, under the lid of the trap.
While both female and male traps contain insecticides, they are very unlikely to contaminate anything if baited and handled correctly. While baiting or handling, especially when removing the tops, you should wear protective gloves.
Refills are needed several times per year, and the BKIT Office have made this available as a service to the community. If you already have traps, BKIT will notify you when baits need refreshing. If you don’t have traps, please consider purchasing them from the BKIT Office and joining our community program.
Traps should be hung in trees just underneath the foliage on the north eastern side of the tree, to catch the morning sun. During winter, it’s important that traps are sited in evergreen trees, because fruitfly are still active but shelter in leafy trees. Citrus, Loquat, Avocado and other evergreen fruit trees are ideal, but any evergreen will do. During the remainder of the year while fruit trees are in leaf, placement of traps into trees several weeks prior to fruit ripening is ideal. Any location is better than none at all!
It’s extremely helpful if you count, remove, and report fruitfly numbers weekly. Use a dedicated pair of tweezers, not used for anything else and stored safely, to remove flies while counting them.
BKIT will regularly report and graph trapped fruitfly numbers on this website.
Please report your count to the BKIT Office each Tuesday by return SMS if you can.