LOL, true @Drew51, baby stuff is really high! The markup on scientific materials, equipment, or really anything sold for scientific purposes is pretty high as well though. I’m not sure which would be higher 
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Reviving this thread after seeing that SWD can overwinter on trees, and shrubs. I plan to spray everything in my garden with lime-sulfur this fall. It is very effective in killing other insect eggs and should work for SWD. If I can kill the total population around me, trying to overwinter I may have smaller breaks outs next year. Almost everything I grow can handle the lime-sulfur, except maybe pluots, but they are getting sprayed anyway. I don’t have apricots, and the apricot part of pluots is what maybe sensitive to the sulfur.
They have not been found on the ground, in leaf matter etc.
I have found no evidence of SWDs in my fall berries, although I think they have probably reached our area. Maybe the hummingbird feeders helped.
I’m not sure treating such a small area would have an affect, SWD that overwinter in your yard will probably migrate out in order to find early ripening fruit anyway, and then migrate back in. I have been thinking of trying to eradicate as many of their hosts as possible, mainly honeysuckle, which is very abundant… But it would be a lot of work, acres and acres of work. It probably would not make a very significant difference either, unfortunately.
On the topic of attract and kill, I tested out some different formulations using fig juice and apple cider vinegar in traps for attractiveness and was not all that happy with the results. I’ve got some figs fermenting now, but SWD activity has already dropped off.
Also wondering if SWD is even a problem with figs at all here. I have been seeing them hanging out in the fig trees for several years but never found any larvae in anything but split figs, until this year, when I also started seeing lots of African fig flies. I have some of those figs in a jar and hopefully can raise some FFs to know for sure if they are SWD or AFF.
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I don’t know anybody growing fruit near me, and I spray my fruit trees anyway, so it’s just a matter of mixing up another gallon or two, so I’m going forward with it.
That’s the way it is here. The gnats “magically” come in from somewhere. Picking up dropped fruit is the biggest preventive from my experience.
I ended up buying the water absorbent polymer and the required yeast, but in the end as a commercial grower, determined it was too much work to make the traps work, if you know what I mean. I still have the ingredients, if someone wants a good deal. I won’t ship them for free, but if someone wants to try the traps, I’ll make a good deal. Traps aren’t viable for commercial growers, unless one uses super cheap immigrant labor, which is not me.
I suspect the traps work, but it takes too much labor to make them work commercially.
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My area is so isolated I think my tactics will work. Their is no place to migrate out to within 5 miles. I don’t see why they would leave the grocery store to go out to the desert? Well any that do stay will be killed. Plus I don’t want to make assumptions without documentation. I can afford the 2 bucks in pesticide I will need to try.
I think the humming birds would work best, but since where I am is not the wild, not one came in to feed.Nothing is near me they would want. I’m going to keep trying anyway to attract humming birds. At my cottage 35 miles away they are all over. And no SWD there at all. All my fruit there was fine.
There are tons of exotic invasives, landscape plants, and native trees that host them. Some of the more in depth studies have fairly daunting lists of species that they can reproduce on… Around here it seems the worst are the cherry trees, honeysuckles, even the mock strawberry that takes over lawns… Then there are trash cans, dumpsters and compost piles to wonder about.
When they got here my boss didn’t hesitate and tilled 2 acres of Heritage raspberries that he’d had for about 15 year, there is just no stopping them and it was too much to spray.
No dumpsters, no mock strawberries, no compost piles, this is the burbs off a big city. Lot’s of pines and other conifers, it’s Michigan. Oak and maples. I’m sure other stuff here they could find, still it won’t be my yard, tell you that…