Flies are annoying, disgusting, and can sometimes carry diseases into your home. And yet, they’re somehow unavoidable. When you realize you have a fly problem in or around your home, there are steps you can take to evict these unwanted tenants.
Follow along to read about what flies are attracted to and our top-recommended solutions for dealing with flies.
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What Attracts Flies in the First Place?
Flies are drawn into your home by a multitude of different factors. Even if you keep a tidy home, you’re still at risk for attracting a crowd of these uninvited houseguests.
Food left out by kids can be the number-one signal for flies to take up residence in your kitchen. Any time a fly smells the aroma of food products, they are instantly baited by the possibility of feeding.
This is also unfortunately true in the case of fruits ripening on kitchen counters: despite these foods being stored properly, the scent ensnares flies on the outside and creates an irresistible passage indoors.
Garbage piles also catch the attention of flies, due to the presence of rotting food and/or waste materials. Flies are scavenger animals that love decay, and thrive on decomposing particles.
Pets or livestock animals who leaves piles of fecal waste in the yard outside the home are a surefire attractant for flies. This is also true for small animals that perish near a home, as flies love to pick rotting carcasses clean.
Are Flies Harmless?
Aside from the horse fly, most common flies won’t bite. That doesn’t mean they don’t bring their own form of danger, though.
Because flies are attracted to feces and rotten byproducts, they are essentially floating vehicles for germs. When a fly lands on an unsanitary item to feed, it carries bacteria from the surface with it everywhere it goes.
The fly that just landed on your hot dog bun could have been anywhere: from another piece of food to the fur of a nearby dead squirrel, you really can’t predict the disgusting whereabouts of a common housefly.
What Are the Different Types of Fly Traps?
This holds a reservoir of fly bait inside and hangs from a support rope. You can use this type of fly trap to clear these airborne pests from your garden, your patio, or even your front yard. Flies fly in through a wide opening that gets smaller from the inside, working like a crab trap: it’s simple to enter, but nearly impossible to escape.
Indoor odorless traps utilize strategies other than foul-smelling fly baits to kill flies. For example, sticky fly tape can be stretched out over a surface (interior or exterior) that will work to disable a fly in mid-flight. This method isn’t totally recommended, though, due to its effectiveness only in the case of a fly coming into contact with it.
This device gives off a blue glowing light to draw in the flies, then uses electricity to kill them on contact. This is the most widely regarded as the best indoor fly trap due to its lack of an odor and its ability to kill flies instantly.
Can a Venus Fly Trap Kill Flies?
When most people think about solving a fly problem in their home, a lightbulb clicks on inside their heads:
The time-honored legend of the venus fly trap. We all saw it in cartoons as children, but never really understood whether these mythical carnivorous plants are real or folklore.
Did You Know
Venus fly traps are biologically engineered to digest the meat of animals. For this reason, they make great fly killers.
Luckily, they are very real, and very much available to swallow up flies in your home!
Each venus fly trap has a mouth-like opening, which waits for prey in the open position and is lined with specialized sensory hairs. When two hairs are disturbed, the trap encloses whatever has landed inside, trapping it in a sort of biological pressure chamber. When three hairs are moved, this plant prepares its body to digest its prey.
If five or more hairs are tripped, the digestive system ramps up to dissolve the prey with these enzymes. Essentially, the more a fly struggles while trapped inside the venus fly trap, the faster it will be dissolved.
Any Other Popular Homemade Fly Traps?
Have you ever heard the expression, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar”? While this idiom has its roots in instilling a sense of kindness in children, its truth really stops there.
In reality, flies get stuck on sticky surfaces by chance and die from dehydration, but they’re attracted to overwhelmingly foul odors, like vinegar. After all, they feast on garbage!
We found this awesome video on a homemade fly trap with a plastic bottle (although it looks ugly, it works):
Another DIY way to keep flies away is to create a mason jar fly trap, or pickle jar fly trap. This method uses a standard mason jar and a homemade paper cone sticking out from the top.
When you place a fly attractant bait inside the mason jar (some sources have used a piece of rotting shrimp) with water, the flies flock inside the paper cone and can’t find the way out of the small opening.
They die in the water either by drowning, or being unable to escape for the duration of their life cycle.
The main issue with a DIY fly trap is that you MUST use the right kind of fly trap bait, otherwise you’re just stinking up the side of your house.
If flies don’t find the bait alluring, they won’t bother to go near it.
What Makes a Professional Fly Trap Better Than a Homemade One?
For the most part, the design of a professional fly trap is more reliable than a homemade one.
All fly traps have basically the same concept and design: There is a container that is used to lures flies in, but then makes it a challenge for them to get out.
The key difference between a professional fly trap and a homemade one is that the bait in a professional fly trap can include a poison that’s sure to kill flies. Poison in most professional fly traps will insure that flies won’t live out the duration of their lifecycle.
Top 4 Best Fly Traps
In the below section we break down each of our product recommendations in a little more detail.
- Victor Fly Magnet Reusable Trap With Bait (the best of the best)
- Rescue! FTD Non-Toxic Disposable Fly Trap (cheaper option)
- Flies Be Gone Non-Toxic Fly Trap
- Fly Web Fly Trap
Victor M380 Fly Magnet Reusable Trap With Bait
This fly trap attracts flies using a specially-formulated fly bait, but also the diamond lid design keeps flies inside the trap, making it one of the best outdoor fly traps.
We REALLY like this one.
The bait is not toxic to humans or animals, and you can really get your money’s worth with this reusable trap.
People are calling this the best thing to happen for fly removal since the fly swatter came around.
The bait and trapping mechanism will knock down just about any fly population in or around your house.
Just make sure to place it downwind as the smells can get pretty bad.
Rescue! FTD Non-Toxic Disposable Fly Trap
This trap uses an attractant that’s made of all natural materials with no chemical agents used. This means that if you have a pet, they’ll be totally safe in the face of an accident with this fly trap.
It works by simultaneous use of two different chambers: A fly can either drown in the bait in the top chamber, or become sealed in the bottom chamber and die from dehydration.
Flies Be Gone Non-Toxic Fly Trap
This product works well in hot, humid areas with lots of flies.
Simply add the fly bait, water, and string up to a tree in your yard and watch the flies collect inside!
Fly Web Fly Trap
This fly trap works with a system of “glue boards” lit by a cool blue light. The flies are drawn to the light and then land on the glue, unable to escape.
They stay there until their life cycle is over, at which time the fly-ridden glue board can be replaced with a fresh one.
Think you might need professional help with your fly problem? Use the form below to connect with local pest control pros:
