Let me start off by thanking everyone for their help.
Over the last few days, my apartment has been filled with house flies. by the end of the day, i have killed at least 20 and the place seems to be clear of them, but without fail, they are there the next day.
I have absolutely no idea where they are breeding, so does anyone have a suggestion as to how i may rid my place of these unwanted visitors? Thanks again.
S
Are any of your screens loose or holey? That would be the first place I’d check. Also, kids or careless type adults going in and out of the house too much might let flies in.
No, the screens seem ok. There are tons of them out side right now–I live in Chicago. Furthermore, we make sure to not enter through the door where they congregate.
That’s weird. Is there a hole in the wall or where the ceiling or floor meet the wall? That’s the only other way I can think of flies invading! Good luck.
Either they are coming from an open window, air duct, or such, or you have a maggot infestation somewhere inside your house. :eek: I would buy some flystrips and hang them around the house–they might be gross, but they’ll catch most flies pretty quickly. And I’d definitely spray insecticide outside that door, and in your garbage cans.
After killing most of the flies, try to monitor which rooms are reinvaded first. A friend had this problem, and after a week or so determined that there had been water leakage from the roof, and apparently the plaster or particle board or whatever substance above the ceiling made good maggot chow. They were then able to enter the living space through a small gap between the light and ceiling plaster in the bathroom.
Elimination of the problem involved removing the light, drying out the wet attic, and spraying insecticide on the maggotty areas.
We had this problem one summer when I was a kid. A few pesky flies would always be in the kitchen near the breadbox. Whap 'em, and the next day, there’d be more. ?!!
I finally found Fly Central: a plastic bag of very old onions next to the breadbox. (I knew I’d found it when a few baby flies zipped out on picking up the bag.) Out went the onions, and bye-bye flies.
I wish I could send you my cat. She’d get rid of several of them, and have you in stitches for hours with her antics chasing after them. If you have access to a frisky cat, you might want to borrow one for the entertainment value–for both of you!
I had something similar a week ago after forgetting the waste of a pineapple in my wastebin. I hung up glued flystrips; they’re ugly, but they worked like a charm catching the little beasts. I can highly recommend that, at least for first help (I didn’t have to do anything involving insecticides because the infestation itself was only in the wastebin, and I simply emptied that).
Flystrips is a nice start.
We get them because our dogs are messy eaters. The dogs use their noses to fling food out of their bowls in the patio, then they drink and slober and the food gets wet. If we don’t wash the slime away quickly, flies will come about. It’s pretty gross.
I don’t know why but about a month ago my house got totally invaded by literally hundreds of houseflies. After getting a couple sets of fly strips (One of which filled up with-in two hours!) Now I could understand if we kept a messy house but my wife is almost a freak when it comes to cleaning.
But on with the flies, it took about 2 days of fly strip dodging for us, and fly strip sticking for them and they seemed to have either been snagged or moved out. Either way we are fly free.
We did have the screens out of a few windows the day prior to the attack to clean the outside of the windows, so that may be how they got in, I still don’t know how or why the “swarm” decided to move in though.
Bottom line FLY STRIPS work!
Yep! it’s hilarious watching my kitty jump in the air taking swings in mid-jump! We’re dealing with tons of flies too, but I know WHY, 2 reasons actually.
(1) The 50lb outdoor wildbird feed we purchased contains dry fruit, which wild birds love! Finished the bag yesterday, purchased more w/o fruit this time.
(2) We leave dry catfood out for stray cat and her kitties… on our deck, so each time we open our glass patio door, which is right off the deck, a vacuum causes 2-3 flies to zoom inside. The cats +kittens eat a.m. & p.m., so we’ll continue feeding them, but use RAID Fly spray to catch the ones that enter in the evening… tidbit re this spray, you have to spray the flies multiple times b4 it actually kills them.
There MUST be a source of food for them in your area… are you in an apt bldg? If so, maybe one of your neighbors are the source.
I had a similar problemn in an apartment I had a few years ago. I never found where they came from but a thorough cleaning of everything seemed to do the trick.
As for getting rid of them, I tried all sorts of things and what worked best for me in the end was glass cleaner and paper towels. You see a fly, hit it with some glass cleaner and it falls down, then you can smack it or get it with a paper towel.
Hmm, a useful 200th post.
Sometimes the source of the infestation isn’t indoors. I had (have?) the same problem. After taking the house apart and finding no source for the flies, I looked outside and noticed my Pitworthy upstairs neighbors had a trash can overflowing with no lid. When I touched it with a stick - flies everywhere! I found a spare lid, and ordered them to cover the other trash can… and there are significantly fewer flies in the house now. I went from 20 or so buzzing in the window to 2 or so a day, which I swat.
Flypaper is the bomb - use it!