Are flies ruining your summer barbecues and picnics? Are you constantly carrying around a fly swatter in your home? Does the faint buzzing keep you up at night? Unfortunately, these are all common scenarios during the spring and summer months when house flies reemerge. Not only are flies annoying, but they can also be major carriers of disease, so it’s time to get your house fly population under control.
Description
There are many different species of flies. House flies are between 4-7.5 mm long. They are mostly gray with four black stripes along the thorax. The house fly is one of the most common household pests. They like to land and lay their eggs on human food, animal food, dead animal carcasses, garbage, and excrement. As the continue to fly and land on different surfaces of your home, they are transmitting all that bacteria and disease with them. Blech!
Since the house fly’s life cycle is so short, it is often difficult to eradicate them from your home. A female house fly can lay as many as 7 batches of anywhere from 75-100 eggs in her life. These eggs hatch in as little as 12-24 hours. Although a single house fly only lives for about one month, there are always more hatching and reproducing to keep up the population.
So, what can you do to get rid of the flies?
First, try to prevent them from coming into your home. Keep your doors and windows closed tight. Check for likely entrances like torn screens, damaged weather stripping or cracks and get them sealed. Next, keep your home as clean as possible from garbage, left out food, sugary liquids, feces, and crumbs. These things will attract flies, and once they are inside, they will reproduce in your house. Fly swatters work well to control the adult house fly populations, but be sure to wipe down surfaces that you touch with the flyswatter. An even better option can be a sticky fly trap. Hang these in areas that receive natural light, like near windows. If the problem is too big to control through these methods, fly bait, traps, and liquid applications can be used. If those annoying flies are ruining your summer, call Six Brothers Pest Control to help you take back control.
