Eliminating flies ?

[Eddy Bentley]

What's the best method for getting rid of flies, particularly in the kitchen?

Sprays work well but stink the place out and coat everything in a sticky toxin.

And those glowing blue lights don't seem to attract our flies at all - particularly during the day when the room is filled with daylight.

A big fly-catcher plant works quite well (if and when the flies happen to go near it) but it doesn't flourish in a south-facing kitchen.

The best method I have come up with to date is to switch on the vacuum cleaner (snake variety), aim the long barrel slowly at the fly, like a snooker cue, and BANG . . . he's sucked up and gone. Five or six careful snooker shots like that and the five or six flies are removed from the kitchen within the five minutes it takes to aim carefully. Very effective, instant gratification, wonderful feelings of revenge, but there's this bloody great vacuum with its long snake attachment and wire sitting in the corner of kitchen all the time.

Any better method?

Eddy.

[Mary Fisher]

...

Mary

[George]

Leaving the doors and windows open so they can fly back out...and they will. :-)

[Symon]

Badminton racquet. Gives flies a sporting chance. HTH., Syms.

[DIY-Not]

We've always found the traditional rolls of flypaper to be very effective. Unfortunately they don't look too appetising, particularly once covered in dead flies. Used to have a venus fly trap that was also effective until my son killed it by feeding it on lamb mince...

[Malcolm Stewart]

What's attracting them in to your home? When I was in my teens I remember many flies in my mother's kitchen (fly festooned sticky strips etc.), but 50 years on I have hardly any. (To the extent that I was annoyed when the last one appeared about two weeks ago.) Both homes were/are in suburbia and farmland is some distance away. I don't keep pets, nor did my mother. I have wondered whether my mother had more uncooked food around, and when out of the 'fridge this would not have been protected by modern sealing techniques. However, she did have a 'fridge and used it.

I don't remember my mother's kitchen being dirty, and it was probably kept cleaner than mine currently is; waste food went onto the garden rubbish heap and rotted away. My waste food is minimal, and goes into a kitchen bin with a decent lid. My mother lived next to an orchard where the apples were only rarely collected, and rotted on the ground. (Local source of flies?)

I do tend to keep my windows and doors closed.

[Mark]

Get rid of any dead bodies laying around and don't kill or remove spiders.

mark

[DIY]

I use a fly swatter. It was 99p from Netto.

[Richard Conway]

Don't tell Andy Hall ;)

[clot]

That really made me smile. My kids are into their 20's, but I could just imagine them doing that in their childhood!

[clot]

;)

[Andy Hall]

Presumably these would all have been tried and tested in the store first....

[dave]

A flexible fish-slice. Just make sure is isn't the one used for your cooking. :) The flexi ones are much better than those rigid ones as they also tend to smash cups, bottles, thermos flasks etc

Don't metion vacuum cleaners to me. I just finished filling a missing chunk of plaster with - filler (actually). Hoovering the bits up afterwards I also went for the mandatory passing fly. Yes (you can see what 's coming), I managed to get it too close to the filler and sucked a big chunk out of it :-) Well, even I had to laugh at myself.

[clot]

[Andy Hall]

How do you think they achieve such low prices on the Garibaldi biscuits?

[clot]

"Freshly made in Store"

[Andy Hall]

Exactly.

It seems that the non word used in the retail world is "instore".

Whoever invented that one should have all external appendages removed for sale on the meat counter. It will likely be the only fresh meat that they have.

[Aidan Karley]

Our Venus fly trap seems to be working fine too. just get another one and feed the son to it.

[meow2222]

Most effective method IME is a slow release vapour killer, like the odl vapona units. They are generally organophosphate though, which is not entirely free of risk.

Proper blue tube killers also work, but the cheapie blue filament bulb ones are useless. Bare low power halogen bulb also works (eg 5w), and electric killers can be DIYed with them.

NT

[meow2222]

Theres now a wiki article on flies