Getting rid of house flies

[StrongLegs]

Hi,

I wondered if anyone might know of a good way to get rid of house flies? We have three house flies in our kitchen all the time, buzzing round our heads and landing on our mugs to have a drink and it's starting to get annoying.

I have tried the following:

• Closed bin,
• cleaning all food waste, even tiny spots on the bin lid
• all crockery straight in the dishwasher
• zapping the flies with an electric bug zapper bat, and then squishing them and putting them in the closed bin. I killed 16 yesterday and somehow we still have three today.
• I don't want a UV light or anything smelly or toxic.
• I tried a yellow sticky trap, but it only caught one fly in 48 hours, even if I leave the trap on the kitchen worktop with a torch shining on it in the dark all night.

One time I got our venus fly trap in and put it on the window sill and I noticed it caught three in half an hour. Should I get getting more of these tiny green predetors?

I'm a bit puzzled by it all.

Thanks!

Clear dettol spray, the lime & mint smells lovely. Spray the little blighters, they will be dead in 5 minutes & you are disinfecting as you go. I do a general spray & wipe of all surfaces & a waft over/in the bin last thing at night as well.

The venus fly traps sound great!

@CoffeeBeansGalore how to you manage to spray them? Do you chase them round the place with the spray gun?

I don't use scented stuff, but if there is unscented I could use it.

funnily i have noticed a lack of flies now
good tip about the spray and the venus fly trap sounds great will look out for one

Swatter

Have you checked for leaks? Rotting wood? Do you have kickboards in the kitchen and are they removable? Are your windows open all the time?

Vacuum them. I find that they appear on my windows in the afternoon/evening. They are easy to get as they are pretty dopey at this time of year.

@ JuneOsborne

I have no rotting wood, but I do keep the windows open all the time.

The kickboards are removable, but are in place. Is that important?

I noticed that the flies are quite dopey actually. I think that is why I am getting them. I brought my venus fly traps in, so maybe they will catch some over night.

There is an unscented version of the dettol. Just spray above them if flying, or more directly when they land somewhere. It's actually got quite a decent width on the spray.

@CoffeeBeansGalore do you happen to know which the unscented one it? I can't find it.

@Sprig1 do you just vacuum them out of the air? That sounds like an interesting sport. :-)

@CraftyGin do you find a swatter works? That sounds like a fun sport too.

Spiders, lots of them and don't remove their webs.

This is it

There is a very slight "clean" smell to it, but certainly not scented. Hope that helps.

[quote StrongLegs]@Sprig1 do you just vacuum them out of the air? That sounds like an interesting sport. :-)[/quote]
This is my favourite sport 😂

Lemons in water chopped up put it in the microwave it's permeates the whole house then place by the back door... they hate it

Also a small bag of cloves by the door helps too

Yes, vacuum from the air, or more often than not they go and sit on a window/light and you can easily get them then.

I've also trained my dog (who stinks as she rolls in deer musk) probably why we have flies to chase them and ultimately kill them

Crikey! There's a whole lot of fun to be had isn't there? I'm going to have fabulous aerobic fitness and hand eye co-ordination by the end of this. LOL!

Thanks @CoffeeBeansGalore

DH and I just had a fantastic game of fly tennis doubles in the kitchen. I think DH has a promising future in the sport. He saw off 16 flies in ten minutes with the zapper bat.