I bought a trap to catch gnats living in my bathroom drain and was going to look into purchasing them wholesale and adding them to our on-line store when I had a conversation with someone who prefers to remain anonymous. She shared how she has been successfully using traps in different environments. I asked her to share her traps and this is what she wrote me.

Refrigerator traps:
As for my refrigerator & freezer, last year, they got super infested and I could hear organisms banging around in there regularly. So, I put a small plate (not a paper plate) of baking soda mixed with D.E. in each area. The organisms seem super-attracted to the color white. And every couple of days, I move the plates around and I crumble the powder with my fingers to keep it from clumping.  This really helped a lot and it got them out of my refrigerator.

But then this year, I started having issues with something else. IDK exactly what is was, but it was definitely getting into my food & vegetables. And the plates of powder I used last year weren’t stopping them. So I took 2 soup bowls, and mixed about 75% bleach with 25% water. I added a few morsels of dry cat-food to each bowl. And I put them in the fridge & freezer. If you have no cat food, experiment with something else and let me know what and how it worked.

Between the powder plates and the bleach, my refrigerator is now clean. I move the bowls around every day or two. And in the freezer, I just keep putting the bowl in until it’s frozen (and I remember it’s there) and then I sit it on the counter until it’s defrosted. Then, I return it to a new spot in the freezer. I suppose I could alternate by switching between 2 bowls for the freezer, but I haven’t really needed to do that.

Room Traps
I use a similar trap for each room in the house. I have basins ranging from what you get during a hospital stay to the size of a small cat litter pan.  I line the bottom with D.E.  Then I add 50% bleach to 50% water.  I

I sit the pans in various places in each room. But it seems each room has a place the bugs & mites prefer best. And I try to stay in that general area. And every so often I add more bleach & water as it evaporates. This has been really effective for killing spring tails, mites, flying midges, flies & fruit flies.  It seems that the bleach without a scent works better. And the bleach eventually decomposes the ‘corpses’ of what’s big enough to be seen. So I don’t have to skim out the dead ones, they just eventually disappear.  And, my cat hasn’t gotten into it. She smells the bleach, and leaves it alone.

Outside Traps:
Outside, I feed 6 feral cats 2x’s daily. Between the smell of cat food and a south wind bringing flies up from Assateague Island (a federal park with wild ponies) flies can be an issue at times.  So I take out whatever leftover bits of catfood there is and I put it on a paper plate. Then I open a Nitenpyram and sprinkle it all over the plate.

I take the plate & put it near where the cats eat. And the flies make a bee-line for the plate. If I have any canned food that’s turned in the heat, I add that too. The canned food sometimes attracts wasps as well. But the Nitenpyram wipes them all out. The flies don’t even need to eat the food, if they just touch the Nitenpyram, and they start to die. It may take a few hours but they will die. Even if the Nitenpyram is sprinkled on the paper plate, any thing that lands or crawls through it, will die.

Now, my cats are very well-fed and a few can be finicky. But a few of the knuckleheads will get into the fly food. (If I put that in their bowls they would refuse to eat it, but any way) I only use 1 capsule at a time and I do try to pull the plate up when the ferals start eating it. They already get Nitenpyram in their food bowls. But none of the cats have fallen ill from the any extra Nitenpyram.

When the plate isn’t outside, I leave it on my counter to kill the wayward fly as well as spring tails & mites. It seems to help.

I’ve found that spring tails (and mites?) are highly attracted to the dry Cat Chow. So, I sprinkle a little D.E. in each bag and that seems to stop most of the problems.  And the D.E. doesn’t hurt the cats. **All of my D.E. is food-grade.


Take care,

Anonymous

I thank Ms Anonymous for sharing her experience. I'm sure most of you could benefit from one or more of her traps.

To summarize:
Refrigerator trap #1: A plate with DE mixed with baking soda
Refrigerator trap #2: 75% Bleach and 25%water with morsels of cat food in a bowl for both refrigerator and freezer.
Room Traps: Using larger pan (pie plate) line bottom with DE and add mixture of 50%water and 50% bleach
Outside Traps: Plate with cat food or spoiled food dusted with a capsule of Nitenpyram.