The weather has finally warmed up here and now there plenty of super annoying houseflies. They’re way to fast to swat and have an annoying habit of landing on you.
I’ve tried Google’s suggestion of water/vinegar and a bit of dish soap in a bottle, but they don’t seem to go for it at all.
I’m up for trying anything, please make suggestions!
Edit: Thank you to all for your suggestions. So far I’ve tried the idea of spraying them with surface cleaner which appears to work well
I’ve tried Google’s suggestion of water/vinegar and a bit of dish soap in a bottle, but they don’t seem to go for it at all.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I always thought this method was only geared for fruit flies, not houseflys.
Flypaper strips can be effective depending on the severity and location of the issue and are fairly cheap. It won’t be 100% effective, but it might help. Just be very careful about where you place it if you have any pets or children.
Not sure what kind of beasts you have but some apple cider vinegar and dish soap works like a charm for me. Definitely need to find the source though. Usually it’s some old fruit that got left out somewhere.
The apple cider vinegar gets fruit flies but the house flies just aren’t interested.
We got one of those electric fly swatters, but the thing is too heavy to swing fast enough to pop flies like you’d want. So on a hunch, I checked YouTube for a trick to make them more effective.
Basically take a styrofoam plate with a little food on it and tape it to the fly swatter, and zip tie the switch down and set it wherever the flies are at their worst. For bait, I just put a smear of ketchup and ranch dressing on a paper towel.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tDZb2l2A888
We managed to kill over 30 flies in about 2 days. Heads up though, they’re not designed to be left continuously powered on, the batteries will end up dead and leaking after a couple days.
I had to toss the batteries and open up the swatter handle to clean out the battery juice off of the terminals so it won’t rot out.
But hey, aside from the inconvenience with the batteries, the trick just freaking works 👍
It would be simple to make it corded with a wall adapter.
I know right?!
But where do you find a 3 volt DC adapter these days?
Well I have like 3 decades of wall adapters collected, so I would dig one out with the right specs lol. You can find the exact voltage and amperage one on Amazon or any number of electronics suppliers.
I do have a spare box of old wall wart adapters put up in storage, I might have to check those someday.
Thankfully not yet though, those two days were enough to kill all the flies we had at the time. 👍
If you want to swat them, you need to move your hand slowly at first. They seem to not notice or care if you move slowly and don’t cast a shadow over them as that will frighten them. I use these same techniques for macrophotography, and it works, but you have to be patient.
I could also recommend getting good at snaping towels. Once you get good at it and you can judge distances, you can hit flies mid-flight.
Or if you just want to buy something and have 50ish bucks to spend you can get this
These things are garbage.
I have one that takes d cell batteries and works great. Have used others that barely function, though
I find it useful when the fly won’t land, I can usually swat it in midair. It’s also my backup weapon when I go to spray hornets nests.
Don’t know about that specific one, but my family has been using this type of “zapping racket” for decades. The ones we got are very effective and have been working that whole time.
I’ve been using these for mossies for years, I know it’s not the friendliest of routes but they are not exactly friends either.
Move your lightly cupped, relaxed hand behind the fly. Then suddenly accelerate and grab the fly that got startled into flying into your hand by the movement.
My cats take care of most of them.
Get a dish towel wet and use that to swat at the fly. The weight of the water and the extra length of the towel let’s you get it going faster than the fly can react.
Has to be more vinegar supposedly but ick… smells horribly.
I just go the old fashion way, newspaper whack.
I slap them mid air when they are slower and with a towel when they fly more erratic and quick.
Satisfying and I get to feed my fly trapInvest in venus flytraps. They’re very loyal pets.
But have some special needs most people don’t know of! They are native to Virginia, they are not tropical plants. Therefore part of their life cycle is a yearly dormancy period due to snow. Put your venus flytrap OUTSIDE in the winter folks! Also I’m told you should only use distilled water. And don’t touch the mouths and cause them to close without feeding.
In addition, be sure to supplement their diet with the occasional human leg
What happens during years it doesn’t snow in Virginia? Do they just die?
I just water them with longer standing but still hard water. It’s very happy.
I bought a couple of these for around the house. https://a.co/d/5vjsVs3 Works very well but mostly at night.
Also to make sure you regularly do the dishes, take out trash and clean up any food sources for the flies. After using the above and doing the above, mine went from insanity to maybe 1 or 2 around the house in about a week or two.
I roast em with a blow torch
