Flies come in many shapes and sizes, although most people will only encounter a few species of fly. Indoors, you might be bothered by the common house fly. Along with this, you could be bitten by horse flies while out in nature. Something you might not be so familiar with, however, are cluster flies. But what are cluster flies actually, and, if you get a plague of these insects, how can you get rid of these sort of flies in the house?
What homeowners need to know about cluster flies
Cluster flies are similar in appearance to house flies, except larger. Another characteristic is that they are slower and do not dart about as quickly as house flies. The biggest difference is in their behaviour. These flies will “cluster” together in large groups (which is where their name comes from).
This clustering can be a little disconcerting for some people. That being said, you do not have to worry excessively about these flies because they are not dangerous to humans. These pests are not known to spread diseases. In addition to this, they do not lay eggs in human food. This means they are relatively harmless. What’s more, they do not cause any type of damage.
But why do these pests come into our homes?
As we’ve said, they do not eat human food, or lay their eggs in food. In fact, their diet mostly consists of vegetation. These pests also prefer the outdoors, which is why you rarely hear about them. If they do come inside, it’s to find warmth, or shelter during winter.
With all this in mind, how do you get rid of these pests if they do invade? What sort of fly control is effective for them? First of all, cluster flies are extremely sluggish. This means you can actually vacuum them up. You can also swat the flies, or simply crush then and clean them up. Once you kill enough of the flies, they won’t be able to multiply successfully and will die out.
Something else you can do is use fly control gadgets or put up fly paper in your home. Leave this up for long enough and you’ll eventually trap and kill these flies. What also works well are home-made traps. To make a trap, simply poke a hole in the lid of a jam jar. Then fill this jar with sugar water and leave it near the area with the flies. They will crawl into the jar to get at the sugar and are then trapped.
Cluster fly image courtesy of TristramBrelstaff under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.