The weather has finally warmed up here and now there plenty of super annoying houseflies. They’re way to fast to swat and have an annoying habit of landing on you.
I’ve tried Google’s suggestion of water/vinegar and a bit of dish soap in a bottle, but they don’t seem to go for it at all.
I’m up for trying anything, please make suggestions!
Edit: Thank you to all for your suggestions. So far I’ve tried the idea of spraying them with surface cleaner which appears to work well
We got one of those electric fly swatters, but the thing is too heavy to swing fast enough to pop flies like you’d want. So on a hunch, I checked YouTube for a trick to make them more effective.
Basically take a styrofoam plate with a little food on it and tape it to the fly swatter, and zip tie the switch down and set it wherever the flies are at their worst. For bait, I just put a smear of ketchup and ranch dressing on a paper towel.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tDZb2l2A888
We managed to kill over 30 flies in about 2 days. Heads up though, they’re not designed to be left continuously powered on, the batteries will end up dead and leaking after a couple days.
I had to toss the batteries and open up the swatter handle to clean out the battery juice off of the terminals so it won’t rot out.
But hey, aside from the inconvenience with the batteries, the trick just freaking works 👍
Well I have like 3 decades of wall adapters collected, so I would dig one out with the right specs lol. You can find the exact voltage and amperage one on Amazon or any number of electronics suppliers.
You’ll catch some flies (and various other insects) with fly paper. The good thing is that it doesn’t smell.
Never heard of houseflies going for vinegar, AFAIK that’s for fruit flies (and even that is rather tricky IME).
It’s apple cider vinegar that works, regular vinegar doesn’t really work well.
Osage oranges also are great for fruit flies.
I’ve tried Google’s suggestion of water/vinegar and a bit of dish soap in a bottle, but they don’t seem to go for it at all.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I always thought this method was only geared for fruit flies, not houseflys.
Flypaper strips can be effective depending on the severity and location of the issue and are fairly cheap. It won’t be 100% effective, but it might help. Just be very careful about where you place it if you have any pets or children.
