Search This Blog

Thursday, July 5, 2012

How to get rid of flies around the house

I know that most of my posts are on plants, but one thing I found that was very useful in nearly eliminating the flies that got into the house were reusable fly traps. I bought them off eBay. They come with their own fly attractant, but there are many home-made recipes that should be able to work just as well. So far I am experimenting with pieces of meat, sugar, and vinegar to try and get the best mix.If you ever plan on buying these, it is important to get the reusable ones because the disposable one that I tried at the beginning filled up to maximum capacity of perhaps over 1000 flies within 3 days.

As the flies go into these traps, they don't seem to be smart enough to find their way out so they are bound to drown in the water below. Near the end of this 48 second video, a total of 2 flies enter this trap.



Here's my set up. Flies slowly started coming in after I took this picture, and the one on the left, closest to the lid of the garbage can ended up catching flies at the fastest rate perhaps due to the amount of flies that fly around that one spot. It also seems like flies are more likely to go into the trap once there are already flies flying around inside the trap.


Here are a couple pictures of the disposable fly trap. This is very effective for the short term, but around a trash can, it will only last for 3 days until there are so many flies that there is no longer any room to fit any more in the trap. The top part of it can still be cut off and placed on top of a jar or one of those plastic wide mouth tropicana orange juice 1/2 gallon containers.







2 comments:

  1. You can also try keeping them away by using a more permanent fixture (no need to buy anything off the net). I visited a home with hardly any flies/mosquitoes. They had clear plastic bags filled with water and with a couple of coins inside hanging around the house. We had fermented fish and fermented shrimp for lunch and it seems to work. I don't have pictures of it on my site but may have some stored. If you're interested to see, drop me an email.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. These 3 traps seem to be sucking in all the flies that hang around the garbage can and I've noticed that flies have for the most part stopped trying to get into the house. I never knew that coins would keep flies away. Maybe its an odor eater, or repellant.

      I'll have to try some raw fish/ shrimp in my traps once they fill up completely which should take a couple weeks now that I have 3 of them with a few more spares just in case the fly population spikes.

      Delete