Where are the FLIES Coming From ?!

[gunDriller]

I am (believe it or not :) ) quite meticulous about taking out the garbage, not leaving food laying around, etc.

And yet, I walk into the hallway next to the back door at night - and I am literally bumping into flies. Up on the ceiling there might be 10 flies.

Same in the office - sometimes.

I am wondering the obvious - where are the fvcking flies coming from ?


One source is my coffee trees. They are in primo soil, and yes perhaps the flies are laying their eggs there.

But then I would see maggots, right ?


The other possible source is, I have bags of dry food in the kitchen. Sunflower seeds, Barley-corn, Bird-seed.

But I didn't think flies could lay their eggs in dry feed. I know moths can, because I can see the moths.


In any case, I put up another dozen sticky fly traps hanging next to the flies' favorite haunts.

Also, I do bring the chickens' food pans in at night - so as not to feed the rats and ground-squirrels - so I have to pick out the watermelon rinds and throw them outside - in a vermiculture bucket (that's some of my primo compost, but it's outside.)


SO MY QUESTION IS ==>

How can flies reproduce, if there is no medium for them to reproduce in ? (e.g. a rotting banana.)


If the answer is that they CAN'T reproduce, then the logical candidate for 'how the flies are getting in' - is, the tiny skinny cracks around the back door. Need to fix my weather-stripping or something.


Have you ever been swamped with flies in the summer, and not been able to figure out where they came from ? They got me scratching my head.

[Jewboo]

House fly eggs are laid in almost any type of warm organic material. Animal or poultry manure is an excellent breeding medium. Fermenting vegetation such as grass clippings and garbage can also provide a medium for fly breeding. The whitish eggs, which are laid in clusters of 75 to 100, hatch within 24 hours into tiny larvae, or maggots. In four to six days the larvae migrate to drier portions of the breeding medium and pupate. The pupa stage may vary in length considerably, but in warm weather can be about three days. When the adult emerges from the pupal case, or puparium, the wings are folded in tight pads.

The house fly crawls about rapidly while the wings unfold and the body dries and hardens. Under normal conditions this may take as little as an hour. Mating occurs immediately. A house fly may go through an entire life cycle — egg, larva, pupa to winged adult — in six to 10 days under Florida conditions. An adult house fly may live an average of 30 days. During warm weather two or more generations may be produced per month. Because of this rapid rate of development and the large numbers of eggs produced by the female, large populations build up.

House flies are strong fliers and can become widely distributed by flying, wind currents, vehicles, and animals. Generally, however, flies are abundant in the immediate vicinity of their breeding site. Under certain conditions, they may migrate one to four miles, but are usually limited to one-half to two miles.

House flies feed by using sponging-type mouthparts. As the fly moves about from one food source to another, it samples and eats its food by regurgitating liquid and dropping it on the food to liquefy it. Light-colored spots called fly specks are visible signs of this type of feeding. Darker fly specks associated with house flies are fecal spots.

The house fly’s feeding and breeding habits, along with its persistence for invading homes and feeding on human food, enable the house fly to spread many intestinal diseases such as dysentery and diarrhea.

Linky (http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ig091)

Verify your weatherstripping and screens in any event. Then start eliminating one-by-one all the egg-laying venues.

:o

[Celtic Rogue]

The flies are bad around my neighborhood this year! There are quite a few immigrants around here and I just thought that they have lousy trash procedures. But its really strange.... anything to so with obummer and the flies around him?

[mamboni]

You should listen to BOOK. When it comes to things that feed off of putrefaction and produce maggots, he is an authority.

[Jewboo]

When it comes to things that feed off of putrefaction and produce maggots, he is an authority.






https://lh3.ggpht.com/-JxpZgMeG984/TmbiAR8tCBI/AAAAAAAAAmI/9NbsfWfIueI/s320/Rich-Doctor.jpg
Runs a "Pathology" department and bills Medicare









:rolleyes: while posting at GSUS all day long...lol.

[gunDriller]

The flies are bad around my neighborhood this year! There are quite a few immigrants around here and I just thought that they have lousy trash procedures. But its really strange.... anything to so with obummer and the flies around him?


i will move a coffee tree onto the porch, where it will be protected from the sun, to see if it 'likes' it. if one plant likes it, i'll move the rest. it's possible that the pan under the plants, where there is water and dirt, might have enough food to start baby flies.

and - the garbage can next to the bed. that one gets ignorred.

and maybe some wet towels on the floor by the back door, to block the door crack.

like someone said - process of elimination.


summer is not my favorite season.

[Santa]

Where are the FLIES Coming From ?!


http://youtu.be/eM3b2LZ4x9I:)

[Cebu_4_2]

Flies here also, they are merciless too. Seems they come from nowhere, I keep no garbage inside overnight and I keep the place clean. They are everywhere yet don't seem to be breeding from any special location. Most of the flies are half the size of a regular housefly...

Spoke with a neighbor and he said he has a lot more flies than usual.

I read Barry was supposed to come here for a speech but was denied. Got to love the south.

[osoab]

You still letting the hens in the house gunDriller?

[gunDriller]

You still letting the hens in the house gunDriller?

OF COURSE !

they are honored guests. but usually only one at a time. they listen to webcasts, e.g. John Friend interviewing some Greek guy about Golden Dawn.

then i do a quick 'sweep', toilet paper in hand, to police any deposits they may have made. yes, it does sound disgusting.


i put a fresh blackberry on a few of the fly-paper traps to try and attract the beasts.

i also notice, if you have some tasty trash, if you wrap it up quick that will trap some flies.

one of the local stores sells Venus fly-traps - for $7. i think $7 is a little much for a dinky little plant, but they are clone-able so ... if i could get an army of Venus fly traps ?


perhaps one of the best defenses is spiders. i noticed one corner by the skylights. a cobweb with about 4 flies. maybe i will clean that up by be sure to be nice to the spider so they stay around and keep doing their spidey thing.

of course, i wasn't planning to spend my summer chasing fvcking spiders ! :)

[Santa]

Sometimes in the summer I get a swarm of fruit flies from the compost bin in the kitchen. They're easy to get rid of by filling a little bowl partway with some sugar water, a cap full of vinegar and a drop or two of dish soap. They can't resist it and drown themselves. A day or so and they're gone. I don't know if it'll work for house flies though.

[ximmy]

keep looking, there's a fresh dead body around somewhere...

[osoab]

keep looking, there's a fresh dead body around somewhere...

Could be dead ground squirrels under the house if my memory serves me correctly.

[gunDriller]

Could be dead ground squirrels under the house if my memory serves me correctly.

well, i did catch 3 rats in the Have-a-Heart trap, and 2 in the peanut-butter-bucket trap.

the ones in the bucket trap drowned, my mistake.

they were all females, 4 of them were adults. so they may have left babies behind, which would have trouble fending without their Mum Rat.


my therapist says i shouldn't feet guilty. :)


God knows what's under the porch and the crawl space. i had vague ideas about turning the crawl space into an off-balance-sheet basement.

we're talking about Mother Nature finding little nesting places in "Man's backyard", so there's probably a boatload of creepy-crawly stuff down there. not much water & not much food.

i did see a brown snake that likes to eat lizards. not exactly what i needed, i was hoping for a rat snake.

[Cebu_4_2]

Sometimes in the summer I get a swarm of fruit flies from the compost bin in the kitchen. They're easy to get rid of by filling a little bowl partway with some sugar water, a cap full of vinegar and a drop or two of dish soap. They can't resist it and drown themselves. A day or so and they're gone. I don't know if it'll work for house flies though.

Just made a batch for the fruit flies, probably too much vinegar and soap though... Will see tomorrow.

[Glass]

fly traps. buy em or make em. Get a soda bottle, cut the top ~1/4. Place some kind of stinky fly nip in the bottle. invert the bit you cut off and push into bottom 3/4 of bottle. Tape around to seal the two pieces together. Hang it up or put it out somewhere.

you can buy the fly trap bait refills if you don't want to mix up somehting of your own. Bait that works in my world. An empty tin soup can part filled with a mix of beer and yeast. inserted into garden ground so dirt is level with top of can. Wait for it to trap a few snails and other crawlies. They crawl in and drown. Let this stew in the out doors until a bit wiffy. Put this in your fly trap.

Keep an eye on it so lizards don't get trapped. Had this happen before. Had to rescue the odd gecko.

Another thing which is very good as a repellant is citronella. Grows as a plant. Can buy all sorts of citronella things like candles, big joss/incense sticks, oil for lamps or garden torches, spray about insect foggers. This stuff is very impressive. Repells flys but also spiders hate this stuff with a vengance. You let them get a wiff of this and they go wild. They pulse and bob about, change colour even. Then then they get up and move house. I had big problems with outdoor eaves spiders. Every rafter had a kind of funnel web spider. Last summer I got lots of citronella burning. All the spiders left. All of them. I'm thinking I will put some in the roof space but I am worried about driving them all into the living space.

Composting or garden fertilisers can cause an increase in flies and very small amounts will result in lots of flies. Australia has lots of flies. I remember we had a big campaign about 10 year ago on people covering up their compost heaps, digging in their garden manure better or using something less like manure and also wrapping and binning their household waste more effectively. This worked amazing and the number of flys is very low for many years. I think the last 2 years the flys have been worsening. Lots of new people in the city from elsewhere who probably need to learn about this stuff.