Fruit Flies

There are all sorts of different varieties of Fruit Flies, and if youare going to feed them to a terrestrial animal it is best to start offwith a culture of wingless Drosophila, which you can obtain from asupplier of biological materials. Schools and colleges sometimeshave stocks of Fruit Flies so it might be worth approaching thosein your area. On the other hand if you want them for birds thewhole business of breeding these delightful animals is simplicityitself. You can buy all sorts of special culturing mediums, but theway I get a culture going is to put some over-ripe bananas into asmall bucket, together with a couple of over-ripe oranges, cut inhalf. Don't use just one banana in a small pot, for it will dry outrather than ferment. The culture should be set up when theweather is warm: there is no point trying to do it in the winter,though once you have the culture going you can keep it all yearround.

Leave the bucket in a warm spot in the garden where the raincannot get in - inside a shed with the window open is ideal, andyou will find after a few days that the bananas are covered in tinywhite Drosophila larvae which look like small maggots. You willsometimes see these better if you look underneath the top fewbananas where it is nice and moist and warm. You may also see afew tiny flies on the surface of the culture, and the whole thing willhave a lively, rich, fermenting fruity smell. What has happened isthat wild Fruit Flies have been attracted by the smell and laid theireggs which have then hatched into larvae. At this stage take thebucket into your animal room. You can put small quantities of thegooey banana into narrow necked containers such as test tubes,and put one of these in each cage, if you have cages, otherwisesimply leave it standing in the bucket on the floor. Very shortly theFruit Flies will hatch out and your animals will have a great timecatching them. You can encourage the flies to certain spots bybaiting them with bits of overripe fruit. Now, providing that youkeep your animal room at between 18°C-26°C (64°F-79°F)throughout the year, and providing that you periodically add acouple more bananas to your bucket, the Fruit Flies will continueto breed with no problems. Occasionally a culture becomesinfected with tiny white mites but they cause no problems and canbe left in peace. When you enter the animal room, if you tap thebucket sharply a few times a whole swarm of tiny flies will emergeto be snapped up greedily by all your animals. If you have enoughit might be worth your while to keep several buckets on the go insequence so that every so often you can clean out the old ones when they dry out and are no longer productive.

Fruit Flies really are very easy things to rear, and when you havethe opportunity examine one closely under a hand lens. The redeyed forms are particularly attractive.