Elmgrovegnome
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- Joined
- Jan 23, 2013
- Messages
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The bear stuff got here because the saying allows for bears and bees. See my reference to busy as a bee or beaver. I'm not sure what kind of crap eating bears you have around Maine but if you are out hunting with dirty diapers, let's just say I'm not sitting around the fire in your hunt camp. Not sure I wanna eat any of the meat from these Maine bears either. Seems like it would be on the extra gamey side.
Now back to the flies, honey, and vinegar thing. The saying that you referenced, y'know, the bastardized one, doesn't specifically say "house flies" It only references flies. And being that fruit flies are flies, you can't just ignore them. Are you some sort of fly racist?
Now I will admit that you bring up an interesting point. I would imagine that flies would love a glazed donut. Especially if it was a glazed Lemon Jelly Filled Donut with some powdered sugar sprinkled on it. Nothing on this earth can resist one of those. The hole in your idea though is that Dunkin Donuts has no clue how to make one. Their donuts are filled with some disgusting lemon custard type goop. But even though I can appreciate the desire by flies to eat a Lemon Jelly Filled donut, that is completely beside the point.
A huge part of the problem with your idea of attracting flies with honey is that the kind of flies that you have selected with such prejudice are a big part of the decomposition chain. Those flies tend to go after rotting items for food. Everyone knows that honey physically cannot rot or spoil. Therefore it would be an extremely poor choice to attract an insect that lives for the decomposition process.
I buy honey 350 pounds at a time for use in a couple of our beers. At no time have I had an issue with flies in that honey. I have however had lots of bees in my brewery and even following my truck when leaving the apiary. In fact, the owner of the apiary says yellow jackets can be an issue and of course there are lots of bees but nary a fly to be found.
Now you claim to have swatted a solitary fly on your honey jar and I would not ever call into question your honesty but is it possible that you had one of those dirty diapers nearby and the fly was simply sitting on the jar whilst it figured out the best way to devour your bear bait? But that is not very likely either as you would have quite a few flies going after this crap as well as - apparently - a bunch of Maine bears. You may need a bigger swatter if you keep that up.
So being that we have established that your version of the saying in no way specifies the type of fly to be attracted, we can then go to the next stage and determine if this version has any merit at all. How you ask? Very simple - and you can do this one yourself with no special equipment necessary. Simply put out a small cup of honey and a small cup of vinegar and see which one attracts the flies. When I performed this test yesterday, the vinegar was swarming with fruit flies and interestingly even a few other types of flies. The honey however, had one yellow jacket and 3 bees either hovering or actually in the honey. I am confident if you try this simple test, you will have similar results and will come away thinking, "Well that Stu was absolutely correct. He definitely knows his crap from honey."
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Well you beat me to the test. I figured I would need to wait until next year to try it. There is still a few bees flying about the fall flowers but flies are pretty rare up here in PA right now. It was about 40 degrees today. I know the fly on the honey jar could have just been a coincidental landing. I have had them land on my syrup covered plate after breakfast though. I would imagine there is a similarity being both are sugar, Honey being Fructose and all but I am not sure about syrup. I am guessing it is the same.
The dirty diapers were just from experience with the garbage cans. My brother had a lot of trouble with bears and the first thing the game commission asked was - do you have a baby in the house. Bears love dirty baby diapers. They like a lot of stuff. I never heard the cooking oil and honey thing though, as a baiting sauce. I do realize they like honey because it keeps me from putting a bee hive out on my land near the forest.
Back to the saying. I am not racist against fruit flies no. I just see so few of them in my house, yet can count 10+ house flies and bottle flies on an early summer day. I have kids that leave the doors open. Its a constant battle. Plus my fly strips in the garage are always covered with houseflies and such but very few fruit flies. So when people say fly I think of the house fly.
So you seem to have proven the saying wrong, I am still going to try on my own because I am very experienced with houseflies. My wife says I am obsessed in that I am constantly hunting them down. I don't like them in my house, on my glass of iced tea or soda, or on anything I put in my mouth. They are especially annoying because they are attracted to my drinking glass, which I always figure was because of the sucrose in my tea, or whatever sweetener is in my Dr. Pepper. I had no idea that I had decaying matter in my drinks and I still have my doubts about that theory of yours. I keep a cover on my glass whenever a fly is in the house.
Since I couldn't do the experiment I did look on google and quickly found this :
Quick Answer
Houseflies are attracted to decaying organic matter which they use both for food and as a place to lay eggs. They're also attracted to sugar and non-decaying food matter, but they're primarily interested in moist, rotting food and decomposing garbage. (http://www.ask.com/pets-animals/attracts-house-flies-8c24c3beabcf5b7a?qo=questionPageSimilarContent). Since honey is fructose it is sugar. One site also mentioned that they are attracted to plant nectar and sap which is also mostly sugar.
I guess you don't have many flies this time of year either.
