In July there was literally an outbreak of fruit flies here. They were in everyones face and causing a major nuisance, so much to the point of them making the local paper. They even would pester you if you had insect repellent on, which actually killed them, and you ended up with dead ff's all over you :angry: That is when I figured it was as good a time as any to start a wild culture and not only did I get one heck of a culture, but there is actually two or three different sp. of ff's in my culture. some are very large, larger than golden hydei, and some are as small as melanogaster. They are in varying stages of development now, with big maggots, small maggots, casters, and new flies emerging daily. the main trouble with them is you usually lose a few during transfer to the mantids. I usually transfer 5-10 at a time from the fly bottle to a small vial that just barely fits onside the mouth of the bottle. Moving quickly is the key to keep them from escaping, but they are crafty and will take any opportunity you give them to escape. I actually dropped the vial once and released 15+ at one time.
Nevertheless, there are wild ff's that come in the house from outside as well, so even if I dont lose any there are still cantseeums buzzing about the house. Now that my open culture has been proven, I'll just use them to my advantage untill winter kills them.