Flies on my pieris forest flame

[drinkingwineoutofamug]

As in the title. I have a forest flame bush, well established, it's finished flowering and new red leaves are shooting. My problem is it's covered in flies!
Every time I brush past it , I disturb the flies and they swarm.

Nothing dead, no mice/rat corpses.
No rotting vegetation
Not near any waste bins
Not near compost
Dog hasn't buried anything funky

Any clues on what to do except dangling fly traps off the bush or spraying with soapy water.

Do you know what sort of flies? House, bluebottle, midgey?

Some look like house flies . Some look like blue bottles.
Not midges

Fed up of being attacked when I go out to hang out the washing

To add one of my NDN has a pivet bush of some kind and has the same issue. Just that passers by get a face full of flies instead

Do you get lots of flies in the house? It might be a suntrap, the flies are just basking there. That there are at least two separate areas with lots suggests, to me, the source is close-ish but not very close. We had a problem in my town with a badly managed waste site where flies were breeding but it was causing problems in dozens of houses. Flies like this will breed in chicken sheds, manure, etc. It could be, with water levels falling, they're breeding in the weed/fish left behind and rotting in streams and ponds. Even a relatively small source can give rise to lots of the little bastards.

I'm assuming this is the first year you've noticed a problem?

We have had fair bit of rain in the last few weeks.
Not really had flies in the house, my Venus fly traps are hungry !
And yes this is the first year of this issue

I think some types of fly have aggregation pheromones (cluster flies...shudder!). If it's an isolated incident it may be there 'something' nearby they've bred in and it'll run its course. You could try a fly trap, jar/bucket of water with something sweet, overripe fruit would work, and a dash of washing up liquid but these are a bit indiscriminate and you might catch bees, hoverflies as well.

I suppose, on the bright side, these insects can be unpleasant but they're harmless, don't bite and the local birds and spiders will catch on and start to polish them off.

Squirt a little garlic puree into a can of water, give it a good mix and water the entire plant with it, leaves and all. That might put them off.

I read that with blurry tired eyes as flies on my penis 😂😂