Flies - House

Got your fly swatter handy? You'll need it this month. We've designated July as "House Fly Month" across Canada. Don't believe us? Go outside on any warm sunny afternoon this month and check around your garbage can. We can almost guarantee that you'll see at least one house fly buzzing around it.

You may find other flies there, too. The house fly is the one with four narrow, black stripes on the gray thorax. Easy to see, if you have a magnifying glass and it holds still for inspection. The house fly is the most common insect in the world. These flies have a simple life cycle: eggs, larvae (or maggots), pupae, and flying adults. House fly larvae may be found wherever organic wastes are available. Typical breeding sites include rotting vegetables, landfills, garbage dumps, barns, kennels, and livestock manure piles. Each female fly lays about 150 eggs at a time. It's easy to understand why their numbers become so high during the summer.

Because of their habit of walking and feeding on garbage, filth-inhabiting flies, like the house fly, mechanically transmit more than 60 kinds of disease-causing organisms to humans and livestock. Because of their role in disease transmission, house fly control is essential to the health of humans and their domestic animals.

Indoors, the fly swatter or sticky trap help for dealing with the annoying fly. Outdoors, the best approach is prevention. Maintaining screens on windows, doors, and vents can prevent many house flies from entering your home. If you have an attached garage, keep your garage doors closed during the day or you may that hundreds of flies have entered it.

Properly packaged, stored and removed garbage may eliminate many problems. If waste must be stored for a week or so, it is best sealed in containers. Backyard compost piles should be turned over regularly. Fresh kitchen waste, tossed on the pile, should be immediately covered with a layer of dirt. If you don't take this simple precaution, hundreds of new flies may appear a couple of weeks later.