<p>Our house, in the last several days, has become overrun by flies. We’ve never had this issue before and it’s really gross. We have no idea how they’re getting in but there are dozens. Does anyone have any advice about how to get rid of them? How to find their entry point? We’ve tried spraying and those fly strips but they seem to come back threefold for every one we get rid of! </p>
<p>We’ve just gone through a pretty intense heat wave so I’m wondering if that has something to do with it…</p>
<p>Sorry to raise this possibility, but are you sure they are entering your house from outside, or could they be breeding and hatching somewhere in your house?</p>
<p>I think that’s a definite possibility, NJers. </p>
<p>We’re doing so many renovations on the house (my parents are moving out, my fiance, myself, and two friends are moving in, four people are temporarily staying here to get out of bad situations, etc) and our house is just in chaos. We tried looking through boxes to see if something had been brought in but no luck. There are dozens of full boxes in the house though so we couldn’t go through all of them thoroughly. </p>
<p>What kind of places do “nests” (or whatever their breeding grounds are called) do they like? Cold dark places? We have a really open house… the top floor is really just one room + 2 bedrooms + a bathroom. We’ve looked thoroughly up here and can’t find anything and we don’t think there’s a lot of places they could hide (up here). The basement though has plenty of dark places though where they could hide, or where there could be a crack that they could get in through. </p>
<p>Ugh… this is just nasty >.< lol.</p>
<p>We’re leaving the house on Wednesday for a few days. We used to bomb the house the few times we had fleas… think there’s something similar for flies?</p>
<p>What sort of flies are they? If they smaller ones a good trick is to put some wine in a bowl along with the smallest drop of soap you can manage. The sweet smell will lure the flies in, and the soap will make it so there’s not enough surface tension for them to land on the wine. They sink instantly.</p>
<p>When we lived in Illinois we had a fly infestation. There had to be a couple hundred or at least it seemed that way. I was pregnant so we didn’t want to use sprays. We never did find out where they came in from. My husband spent hours with a rolled up newspaper killing them one by one. Ugh it was gross but effective.</p>
<p>We got them once. We had a bag of potatoes in the pantry that were, NOT fresh! We were baffled for a while as every day we’d kill them and then the next day they’d be back. Gross.</p>
<p>They don’t look like the cluster flies… and they’re really not “clustering” anywhere. They’re just kinda buzzing around. </p>
<p>We put up a bunch of strips and sprayed the basement this morning and suddenly they’re far less numerous upstairs. I think we at least know where they’re coming from now.</p>
<p>Suddenly, I’m grateful for winters that kill all these things off (for the most part) lol</p>
<p>I almost started a thread with this question myself. We had some painting done while we were away during the 4th of July holiday, and when we returned there was an unusually high number of flies. They were mostly near the kitchen counter (fruit bowl, etc) and the picture window on the sunny side of the house. We didn’t know how to start to look for where they were coming from, but went to a hardware store and bought some fly paper…some sheets to put on the window, and a stick for the kitchen counter. About a half dozen flies got stuck to the window sheet, and none on the kitchen stick, but…we’ve only seen two since we mounted the flypaper. A cheap thing to try…hope it would be as effective for you as for us.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why it works, but it does. I hang it on the chain that suspends the light above our table so it’s inconspicuous. You can buy it at Lowes.</p>
<p>We had them once. I think a rat or something died in the walls and then we had a smell and flies. Ick. We eventually killed them all and they didn’t come back.</p>
<p>Same thing with us, I think something died, it was always vague smell, maybe got in through a crack in concrete outside? They don’t have a long life thankfully but I remember killing about 6 thinking, “That’s it” and then seeing 3 more the next day by a window. Every room had a swatter or newspaper “just in case”. I almost got a strip, but then they seemed to be gone.
My friend realized when she put her air conditioner in a window, fly’s were getting in a gap between the upper and lower window and a small gap under the panels on the side. </p>
<p>Flys are awful but I think the pantry moths a couple of years ago were more irritating.</p>
<p>Good to know we’re not the only ones with this problem! We get it for 4-5 days almost every year in late June or July. Big black flies showing up out of nowhere- no basement or attic; I can only figure they’re hatching somewhere in a wall and escaping through a tiny hole. We’ve never been able to find out their source.</p>
<p>The redeeming factor is that these flies are extremely sluggish and are very easy to kill with a swatter. I claim their life cycle is get born, fly to a window to dry their wings, die. When they were here a couple of weeks ago, I was swatting 5 or 6 at a shot. I disposed of the ones in the middle of the floor. The rest under the windows, I vacuumed up after three days - counted 43.</p>
<p>The part I dislike the most is that they’re attracted to the TV at night and I don’t want to squash them against the screen. It’s like they’re crawling on people’s faces. I feel like yelling, “Buffy - you’re a vampire slayer; can’t you kill a damn fly?”. (I’ve been rewatching the entire Buffy/Angel series streaming Amazon Prime through my Wii.)</p>
<p>Flymetothe moon - It says not to use the no-pest strip inside the house where people are living… I think there is a health issue with breathing the fumes.</p>