Help! Flies! How long before they clear?

[Alltheprettyseahorses]

Right. Vile one this which is why I came to 30 days and not housekeeping so it disappears.

I had workies in the other day and they had the front and back doors open all day to do their job and a fly must have come in and laid eggs.

Tuesday night, there were 20-odd house flies in the vicinity of a section of the hall so all within a couple of metres inc just inside the kitchen but not really any further. I hoovered them all up with my handheld and got rid of them outside.

Yesterday there were another 15 or so appearing in small groups throughout the day, all in the same sort of area. Again hoovered up and disposed of outside.

Today I've had 7 so far, in groups of 2 then 3 then 2 appearing between about seven and ten past ten.

I've cleaned where they seem to be coming from but I've got quite poor eyesight and there could be a chance I missed something. There's nothing dead and no obvious food spills.

I know when they're there because something feels out of place and I notice even if I can't quite see them properly without my glasses iykwim. Then I put my glasses on and do a blitz.

Anyone who knows their stuff, roughly how many should I expect and long could it be before they stop appearing? Google isn't helping, there are lots of contradictory stories. We had fruit flies last year from a bunch of bananas and they took 6 days to clear, I really hope these horrible things are gone quicker. I'm back at work on Saturday so they'll have to, I don't want to come home to them everywhere! 😱

They may well be cluster flies which have hibernated in your roof space. They are aiming to get outside but I hoovered them up as they appeared and they have not returned

Ick. They're downstairs and sort of coming from under the stairs but it's and old banister (being replaced next month) and there are gappy bits where they could have been. How long did yours take to go?

Edit - I really wish I hadn't googled cluster flies!

We've had this before but in our case it was fly eggs laid on a dead mouse under the floorboards. They seem to come up for several days, but the good thing was that freshly hatched flies are still a bit dozy and easy to swat. We sprayed loads of fly spray into where they were coming from and also hung a fly paper immediately above, which caught a lot of them. If yours have been going on for a few days they should be almost finished.

As an aside, the fly egg/maggot/fly cycle is about a week, so if your trades were only in a couple of days ago then they likely wouldn't have hatched already. The fly eggs will also need a food source to enable them to progress through a few moulting stages before they pupate into new flies. The maggots must have been feeding on something to enable them to become flies.

Now mice did go through the block several times a couple of years ago and we were the only ones who got pest control out so I wouldn't be that surprised. No signs of vermin and the meter cupboards in the hall are stuffed with mesh but flies could get through that I suppose. The flies were definitely quite slow and dozy, only a couple got away at first go and I think/hope I tracked them down almost straight away. Fingers crossed I'm at the end of the foul things or nearly there. I do not want them spreading.