There are explanations for where flies come from in apartments, houses, if the doors and windows are closed, or even in winter. There are many ways of penetration. Flies enter the room through sewer pipes, ventilation shafts, and any cracks in the walls, floors, windows, and doors. The person himself brings fruits and vegetables along with infected fly eggs. In the modern world, there are many effective means to combat winged pests, but the most important remains compliance with the rules of hygiene in the house, cleanliness, and the absence of food suitable for flies in the kitchen.
Peculiarities of insect life in an apartment
The common (house) fly is a well-known parasite that is not picky about food. The insect spends almost its entire life where there is a lot of food and favorable conditions for reproduction. Swarms of flies are found near garbage cans, landfills, in open toilets, damp basements, etc.
Insects are very prolific. The main feature of their reproduction is the laying of eggs in hard-to-reach places. In 30 days of her life, one female can lay up to 600 eggs. One clutch includes 150 pieces. Within a week, maggots (larvae) hatch, and after 2 weeks the pupa turns into an adult, ready for fertilization and reproduction. The process lasts endlessly until the cold weather.
On a note!
For the development of maggots, soil or a rotting environment is required. In apartments, this could be a flower pot, a trash can, a box for storing vegetables, excrement in the toilet, or ordinary dirt. Parasites do not reproduce in an apartment as intensively as in natural conditions, but this amount is enough to annoy the residents of the house.
Prevention of occurrence
After the owner of the house has managed to stop the invasion of pathogenic insects, he needs to move on to preventive actions. Their basis is considered to be maintaining cleanliness and order not only in the kitchen, but also in other rooms. Do not create piles of food waste, constantly remove accumulated garbage, store unused vegetables and fruits in the refrigerator or airtight container.
Other preventive actions include using mosquito nets on doors and windows. Indoor plants on the windowsill, for example, geraniums, tomato seedlings, and eucalyptus, can also repel flies. Insects do not like the smell of elderberry and tansy.
Flies are quite frequent guests in our apartment. These insects multiply quickly and can cause harm not only to humans, but also to pets. The chemical “Dichlorvos” will help quickly destroy pests, but it is better to prevent them from appearing in the apartment. To do this, you need to keep the house clean.
Danger to humans
Flies in the house not only bring discomfort and irritation with their presence and buzzing, but they are also dangerous due to the spread of pathogens, infections, and diseases. There are many types of flies that harm humans in different ways. Among them there are blood-sucking parasites, pests that destroy crops and harvests. The most common are house flies and green flies in apartments and houses.
Diseases, infections:
- diphtheria;
- cholera;
- worms;
- tuberculosis;
- anthrax;
- severe poisoning;
- intestinal infections;
- brucellosis;
- tularemia.
Having excellent charm, flies are able to smell food from afar, they are especially attracted to the aromas of decomposition products. An infestation of flies in an apartment is observed in the kitchen, where they come into contact with household products, human food, in toilets, and restrooms.
Where do flies come from in an apartment?
Several types of flies live in a person's home. They are similar in appearance, lead a similar lifestyle, so the owner does not even think about their differences. With the onset of warm weather, apartments are colonized by house flies, which are not adapted to live in the wild; by the end of summer, biting flies appear; at any time during the warm season, a blowfly of a gray color or with a beautiful green or blue tint can enter the room.
Flies appear indoors on their own or are brought in by people without knowing it. Adults crawl through small cracks in the wall, window sills, and ventilation shafts. They climb in through doors that are not tightly closed, if there are flaws in the mosquito net. And even if the house or apartment is completely sealed, all precautions are taken, parasites may end up in the room.
They are introduced by humans themselves at the stage of eggs and larvae. Females lay eggs on ripe or rotten vegetables, fruits, plants, and flowers. Green flies in an apartment or house appear due to stale meat and fish, since it is there that a new generation of pests begins to develop.
Interesting!
In winter, flies may appear in the house in a warm room. Their presence at this time of year is even more puzzling, since there is nowhere to come from. With the onset of cold weather, insects climb into cracks, fall asleep, and remain invisible to humans. On warm winter days, when the sun shines well through the windows and a comfortable temperature remains inside the building, they wake up. However, such wakefulness does not last long. The insects are either killed or they hide again.
"Winter sleep" of flies
Where do flies spend the winter? Where do they go during the cold season? All flies experience unfavorable winter conditions differently, therefore the process of wintering in all species of these insects occurs in different ways. The state into which most flies fall in winter is called diapause - it is similar to suspended animation in animals, that is, the period when an individual simply sleeps.
Their metabolism and other vital processes slow down, which increases the body's resistance to adverse external conditions. This feature allows them to withstand frosty winter days. The flies that are found in our homes are classified as houseflies or houseflies.
But many insects of this species are able to live much longer. Then the question arises of how flies overwinter. So, first, some general information. The female makes her last laying of eggs in the autumn.
Adults and small larvae do not die during the cold season, but fall into a long winter hibernation. Starting from mid-October, you will not see a single fly on the street. House flies easily adapt to any climatic conditions, hiding in various cracks, window frames and similar places where a constant room temperature is maintained throughout the cold season.
They also try to overwinter in the ground, but severe frosts are destructive for them. Winter hibernation in insects is deep and requires special conditions for the individual to wake up. Usually, when daylight hours increase and a certain temperature sets, which happens in the spring, flies begin to wake up. After long winter cold, the insect does not immediately come to its senses. At first, the fly is half asleep.
Sciarida (flower midge, fungus or soil gnat)
The flies are 3-4 mm in size and black. They are malicious pests of indoor flowers. Mature small flies do not pose a danger, but their larvae cause irreparable damage to the roots of the plant.
Sciarida
Their habitat is soil, damp basements of houses. They enter the room through ventilation, with soil for plants. They also feed on fruits, rotting vegetables, and food waste. They do not cause harm to humans, but if you do not start fighting, indoor flowers may suffer.
Prevention of the appearance of sciarids, methods of control:
- Dry the soil to a depth of 2 cm to destroy pest eggs.
- Place expanded clay and gravel on top of the soil. This will prevent the fly from reproducing in the ground.
- Remove dry flower buds and leaves in a timely manner.
- Do not water flowers with milk, broth, etc. They lead to active reproduction of flies due to rotting.
- Water the plant a couple of times a month with a small dose of potassium permanganate solution.
For disinfestation of premises, insecticidal sprays, aerosols, and concentrates are used.
How to prevent flies
To get rid of uninvited guests, it is enough to follow the following rules: regularly take out the trash, do not allow spoiled food to be stored, wash dishes immediately after eating and do not accumulate them in the sink. You should also purchase a mosquito net and hang it on windows and doors to prevent flies from entering the premises of your house or apartment. Such a simple device will prevent the appearance of insects in the warm season and reproduction in the following periods.
There is a popular belief that the appearance of a large number of flies is associated with an improvement in the well-being of the hosts. The sign is also associated with the expectation of a major quarrel.
If all attempts to find out where flies come from indoors have failed, then it is better to contact sanitary services, who will find and eliminate the breeding ground.
“Ah, red summer, I would love you if it were not for the heat, dust, mosquitoes and flies...” Apparently, these annoying creatures really irritated the poet if they were reproached in poetry. And who would like being next to a swarm of flies? Carriers of infection, inhabitants of garbage dumps, molesters! They won’t let you take a nap in the shade, they’ll fall into your food, they’ll leave marks on cleanly washed glass... It would seem that from the point of view of signs, the appearance of a fly shouldn’t bode well. However, superstitions are unpredictable things.
Where do flies come from in winter?
It happens that in the middle of winter a fly suddenly appears in your apartment, and you wonder where it came from? Flies hide well for the winter in the cracks of wooden windows, between floorboards, in heating pipes in basements, and in garbage chutes. Therefore, with a successful combination of circumstances, after warming up, it can return to an active state. This can often threaten residents of the first floors located very close to basements and garbage chutes.
In the fall, insects fly into living spaces in search of winter shelter; at this time they are especially clingy and annoying, and they strive to sit on you and bite you. They are looking for a wintering place and wooden windows in a warm house or apartment facing south and west will be an ideal option for them. As soon as the spring sun warms up, they will immediately crawl out of their crevice shelters. This also happens on warm winter days, when the sun sufficiently heats the place in which the fly was hiding and throws it off its biological rhythm. If you have equipped yourself with a beautiful wood-burning fireplace, you can expect the arrival of a winter visitor with firewood in which she has decided to hide.
Should I worry?
Yes, you need to worry. It is believed that houseflies transmit at least 65 different diseases to humans. The bacteria and viruses that they carry cause food poisoning, diarrhea, eye infections, dysentery, cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, anthrax, and leprosy.
They fly from the garbage onto the table, capable of carrying more than a million bacteria on their legs and body. Before the invention of modern antibiotics, they were definitely lethal.
A house fly vomits on your food. She only digests liquid food, so when she sits down on a sandwich, she immediately spews saliva onto it. Then he sucks in the vomit. Some of the saliva will remain on the bread when you are about to bite into it.
Find out more How to get rid of aphids on indoor flowers
They leave spots. The small black dots you see in places where pests have spent some time are their feces.
Traditional methods
A favorite means of dealing with buzzing and annoying dipterans is an ordinary fly swatter or its harsh analogue - newspaper rolled up in several layers. However, other techniques are common among people to help get rid of annoying insects.
Fly tape
Velcro tape is not the most aesthetically pleasing, but very effective tool. It is sold in any hardware store and has an affordable price. All you have to do is buy it in the right quantity and hang it in crowded places.
The principle of operation is extremely simple: the aroma of the tape attracts the fly, it flies to it to feast on it or lay eggs. It lands on a surface lubricated with a special substance and sticks with its paws. Lack of food or sticking of the respiratory organs leads to the death of the insect.
Pros:
- low cost;
- efficiency;
Minuses:
- the need to watch the dangling fly corpses;
- may cause hair to be pulled out and snags on clothing; In large spaces it will not be possible to get by with Velcro alone.
Vacuum cleaner
Velcro tape comprehensively solves the problem with several dozen flies. But what to do when there are hundreds of them? This is a task for a powerful vacuum cleaner. Arm yourself with the device and treat those places where the greatest accumulation is: windows, window sills, cracks, etc.
Among the disadvantages of this method:
- inconvenience - the vacuum cleaner is heavy and not the most mobile, with it you will not be able to penetrate into secluded places where dipterans are hiding;
- high cost - not every home has a vacuum cleaner, and buying it only to fight flies is not the most sensible and rational decision.
Plants
An effective and environmentally friendly tool for combating buzzing dipterans is repellent plants or eater plants. The first include geranium, wormwood, walnut or tansy leaves, field daisies, as well as tomato tops - flies really don’t like their smell. The second one is the Venus flytrap. This is an amazing fly catching plant. Just place it in areas of greatest congestion and the problem will resolve itself.
Natural poisons
Some products that people actively use in cooking turn out to be destructive for flies. Therefore, they can be used in the fight against annoying dipterans and not worry about your own health.
What natural ingredients do insects hate?
- Ground black pepper. It is usually combined with something sweet - honey, jam or glucose syrup.
- Carnation. The spice kills flies - just spread it in crowded areas and after a couple of hours you will see that the home space is free.
- Garlic. It must be cleaned and crushed, scattered where dipterans fly.
As you can see, these are common foods that everyone has in their refrigerator.
Mechanical control, physical control
Compliance with all the above sanitation rules will significantly reduce, but not completely eliminate, flies in your apartment or house. Additionally limit the number of these health-damaging pests, possibly by using appropriate barriers and traps.
Install and maintain tight-fitting window screens. Check them for holes, tears and repair if necessary. Seal openings around windows and doors.
Mechanical control includes anything that is not chemical but kills or traps flies. Here are some ways:
Fly swatters will kill small numbers of insects, but be careful not to get any of them into your food.
Trap with sticky paper or tape that contains an odor attractant. (Many are white because house flies are attracted to white surfaces.) It works well, most useful when the population is small.
If you've followed all the steps to limit breeding sites, hang a few sticky traps to deal with those that accidentally wander into your home. But you might not like the ribbon of dead flies hanging from the ceiling.
You can use baits with molasses, sugar, fruit or meat. Baited traps often use pheromones (sex attractants).
Ultraviolet light traps are useful, but must be positioned correctly:
- where they cannot be seen from the outside, so as not to attract insects into the room;
- no more than 1.5 m above the floor - where the majority flies;
- away from light sources (including sunlight) and food preparation areas.
sat on a person
If there is a fly in the house, sooner or later you will find it on you. And this will mean absolutely nothing, since the human body is covered with a thin layer of sebum, sweat and emits an appetizing smell for insects. However, signs ignore this fact, and a completely different explanation is found for the fly’s behavior.
Got tangled in my hair
There is a version that this sign predicts separation for lovers. True, without specifying, forever or temporarily, so there is a way to get rid of a bad omen. Spend the evening apart, and the fly's prediction will come true painlessly for both of you.
Got in the eye
If a fly gets into your eye, you will cry. The sign is 99% true, since our eyes are very sensitive to irritation, and after meeting an insect rushing in low-level flight, tears will probably flow in hail. All the better! This means that you have already cried for yourself and there is no need to be afraid of troubles in the future.
Sat on my nose
Did the flyer land right on your nose? Signs remain silent, but the “Big Dictionary of Russian Sayings” (also folk wisdom!) convicts the owner of the desire to sip a glass or two.
In ear
There are two options for interpreting the sign:
- People are gossiping about you. But there is no reason to be upset - if they gossip, it means they are jealous, and since they are jealous, it means there is something to be said.
- Someone from the other world sees that you are about to stumble and is trying to let you know about it. Just in case, remember all the offers that you have received recently, and think about each one three times before giving an answer. The habit of weighing everything once again will not let you down, even if the insect did not get close to your ears.
In the mouth
- Whoever swallows a fly will vomit. Can not argue with that. True, popular belief explains this by special mercy towards annoying insects of higher powers, and modern medicine explains it by disgust. But the result is the same in any case.
- Metaphysically, you are advised to pay closer attention to what comes out of your mouth. Remember how often you say unnecessary things and then regret what you said?
Sometimes a fly is a sign of good luck
