Well, what a fantastic summer we’ve just had, and wow, my generation constantly hark back to those far off halcyon days of 1976 and the so called, long hot summer, which has to be remembered for all time. But I think this year tops the summer of ’76, and the Brucie Bonus of the Summer of ‘26; we even had a solar eclipse to boot! 

 

You may possibly pick up the vibe that I like a hot summer and I certainly do, well let’s face it, despite slowly dissolving into a human puddle and the sweat constantly pouring down my face, I usually pay a lot of money for a fortnight of treatment and to get weeks and weeks of it for free, is just wonderful. And this s from a guy who’s working up inside people’s lofts, I just love a long hot summer and I’m not alone in this, flies probably love it more than I do. 

 

I’ve already written a blog on the disappearance of wasps and bees from our gardens as it’s just been far too hot for them but its flies that have emerged as this year’s winner in the Pest Pain in the A@$e Awards, there really are so many flies about! 

 

The purpose of many of these blogs is one, to keep the website updated for search engine optimisation and then more importantly, the second reason is to try and inform people of why we see pests and if they can resolve the problem themselves, then it’ll save them money in the long run. Take the blog on garden cockroaches, that was written because we as pest controllers can’t really treat these harmless, but slightly scary insects, because they don’t respond like the real pest species of cockroach and our traps and poisons won’t work. 

 

If you’ve got a problem with flies then usually there’s a background reason for their presence, determining what that problem is and reason why the flies are there, will give you the resolution to your problem and then you’ll have no more flies, it’s that simple. You can do this without professional pest control help and save yourself some money into the bargain. Let’s look at the most common flies that you’ll meet and try to get an idea of where the potential problem is. 

 

When we talk about flies, we are discussing a broad band of insects all from the scientific order of Diptera, this term descends from the Greek word meaning “two wings” and there’s around 7000 different species of fly living in the UK. These include mosquitos, lacewings and hover flies, it also includes the house fly, the drain fly, cluster flies and carrion flies and these are the Not So Fantastic Four, and this is what the blog is all about. 

 

Well, whether you like it or not, we’ve all got house flies this year and these are those large black flies that are just so annoying! They’re in constant motion, flying around the room, travelling in a square pattern as they keep themselves an equal distance from the walls. 

 

These flies are all males, if you watch them, they may perch hanging upside down from a light fitting in the middle of the ceiling when they want a rest, otherwise what they’re doing is a mating dance as they stake out their territory and fly around it, showing off to the girl flies.  

 

When another male enters the airspace of another’s territory, that square turns into a boxing ring and the two flies will fight it out to claim the space. A fun fact but they’re still so annoying. 

 

All flies are pests by their sheer presence, we all know that flies will walk across kitchen surfaces and onto exposed food stuffs with no regards to the fact that moments ago they were stamping all over a dog turd on the neighbour’s lawn, so yes, they are definitely a pest but you certainly don’t need professional help to deal with these. 

 

Simply spray them with any over the counter fly spray and your problem is solved, until tomorrow that is! 

 

These are tiny little flies that you’ll often notice in rooms that connect to the sewer system, so the toilet, bathroom and kitchen, as they’re connected to the drains. 

 

Now we don’t immediately associate their presence with a broken drain, but they live in crud that coats the inside of waste pipes and these can range from a handwash basin, the trap under a walk-in shower, a floor gulley in a commercial kitchen and as has happened, a coffee machine in a pub. 

 

As water levels drop through evaporation or the lack of use from say, that walk-in shower no longer being used, the reducing water level exposes a thin layer of gunk that coats the pipes. These flies will lay their eggs in that matter because it contains all the good stuff like skin cells, hair and the remains of bodily fluids. Hmmm lovely. 

 

Eventually the eggs pupate and out comes these tiny flies that measure just a few millimetres across, and you can tell them by the feathered edges of their wings. 

 

Probably one of the easiest flies to deal with, fill the pipes with bleach or if you’re really handy, dismantle the easy sections and clean out all of that organic matter. The coffee machine story was a pub that had installed a machine in the bar, and the waste water and coffee ran to a 25-litre container that was hidden in a cupboard on the other side of the bar wall and had never been emptied The place was literally alive with drain flies and none of the staff could work out why. 

 

If these actions don’t get rid of the fly problem, then certainly look into the possibility of a broken drain under the property but from experience, don’t go straight to that scenario, try a little DIY pest control and see if you sort out the problem. 

 

I love carrion flies; it’s always a sure sign that somethings dead and just by following them you can often find out what’s going on inside someone’s home. But why are you seeing bluebottles or greenbottles? 

 

When it comes to down to pest control, sadly too many companies take a straight to rodenticide approach because it’s easy, they make more money and it requires very little training and effort to just throw a handful of poison into someone’s loft. And the piece de resistance of lazy pest control, they’ll often make the remark “I’ve left loads of bait in your loft, so you’ll have no problems for years to come”. 

 

This happens in so many cases you’d be amazed, despite the fact that we’re supposed to pick up any unused poison because, well its poisonous to all living creatures and shouldn’t just be left lying around! Anyway, the presence of carrion flies will often be explained by a rotting animal carcase because they never “got rid of the problem”, all they did was kill off what was originally inside and now more visitors have come along and found that left over rat poison. 

 

So if you’re seeing carrion flies and in the past you’ve had a rodent problem I’d suggest doing the biscuit test: pick up and throw away any leftover rodenticide, wear gloves as you shouldn’t touch it or phone up the company and ask them to remove it. But don’t hold your breath whilst waiting for that to happen. 

 

Go to the loft, the cupboard or that loose floorboard and put down a few biscuits, not nice chocolate coated ones but something manky like a ginger biscuit, I hate ginger biscuits, whoever thought that was a good idea??? 

Keep an eye on the biscuits, most internal rat or mouse problems start once the weather turns wet and cold so you can keep watch and if the biscuits go, then yes, you’ve got a problem but don’t call that last company, find someone who will get to the bottom of the problem. 

 

Ahh, now that we have all moved to fortnightly or, if you’re unlucky, three weekly waste collections, you will see carrion flies around your bins. We are asked to separate food waste from landfill waste however, often small traces of meat, blood, and other organic waste remain on the waste packaging.  

 

You could wash everything before you throw it and that would make sense, but for a lot of people they just don’t have the time or inclination to be that ‘clean’ about their rubbish. 

 

As our household rubbish basks in the heat in its lovely black wheelie bin which in turn, absorbs more energy from the sun, any organic matter quickly breaks down and as it does, gases such as butyric acid and hydrogen sulphide are released. Ok, other gases such as carbon dioxide and methane and ammonia are also released in this process, but it’s those first two gases that are the really smelly ones. 

 

Butyric acid is responsible for that sour, vomit like smell which you can pick up as you walk past a wheelie bin, the hydrogen sulphide gas smells like rotten eggs and mixed together, they’re now what I call the smell of summer. 

For some people with larger outside space, they can keep their bins away from the house and if they want, they could hang up a fly bag which is a trap for carrion flies both greenbottles and bluebottles.  

 

These fly bags smell worse than the bins once they start digesting flies but they’re incredibly effective, and maybe the rest of us with smaller houses, need to consider washing out our bins and the rubbish we throw in them to try and alleviate that gas generation? 

 

Having flies around is more often that not a sign of an environmental issue rather than a purely pest issue; a good example and one that I get loads of calls for is a householder having a really bad fly infestation of “small black flies”. Invariably these are in their home because they’ve re-potted house plants in non-sterilised compost, and what’s happening is that as the organic matter is rehydrated, existing fly pupae that was dormant inside the dry compost, comes to life and then flies hatch out, mate and lay more eggs back in the fresh, damp soil. 

 

So before you reach for the phone and make that call to a pest control company, think about the internal environment and see if you can trace the cause of the problem; any pest control company will be delighted to take your money to kill off those pesky flies but without understanding and getting to the bottom of the problem, they will only reappear in time, which means that you're just wasting money!