• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Flies

Mike G

Mike G

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Mike
Love summer..........hate the damn flies.

What do you do about them? My wife hates sprays, and that sticky fly-paper covered in corpses is just gross, so what do you guys do to keep the pesky little disease-carriers out of your lives?
 
I'm not convinced there is a good option. Most fly paper doesn't work that well and, as you say, isn't the nicest thing to have hanging in the house.

We've got one of these in the lounge and that works quite well, although for the biggest flies it just stuns them and you have to go and squish them in a tissue afterwards. It's not the best solution (the best solution would involve them not coming into the house in the first place), but I'm not sure there is one really.
 
Move into town ;)

Funny you should ask this Mike (& of no help) my wife & I have recently been cat sitting for a mate who lives out in the sticks & we’ve been staggered by the amount of flies he gets, it’s a lovely picturesque place in the country but as my wife said she couldn’t put up with all the flies.
We seem to get very few in comparison.

Have you thought of making screens for any openings to stop them entering the house?
 
A flay catcher, when he is not sleeping, and a fly swot. I do use yellow sticky papers in the garage which is part underground and attracts a fair few mosquitoes. The trick with the swot is to flick at the fly and try not to squash it. A technique I have developed but others around here have not

IMG_4255.jpeg
 
What I have seen used out at the farm are these “Redtop Trapa”. They hang them in the trees away from the house. Yes, they pong, and are effective!


RedTop-Fly.png



“Natural methods include using plants like basil, lavender, and mint, essential oils such as citronella, eucalyptus, and lemongrass, and apple cider vinegar traps.”



We have a number of these Stapelia gigantea in the garden. And the flowers pong, so not to be planted too close to the house.

SG.png


https://pza.sanbi.org/stapelia-gigantea

They attract the flies, the flies lay their eggs on the flower, flower dies, eggs die.
 
What about one of those electric fly swats?

You can brush up on your backhand at the same time.
 
Phil said:
What I have seen used out at the farm are these “Redtop Trapa”. They hang them in the trees away from the house. Yes, they pong, and are effective!


View attachment 34303



“Natural methods include using plants like basil, lavender, and mint, essential oils such as citronella, eucalyptus, and lemongrass, and apple cider vinegar traps.”



We have a number of these Stapelia gigantea in the garden. And the flowers pong, so not to be planted too close to the house.

View attachment 34304


https://pza.sanbi.org/stapelia-gigantea

They attract the flies, the flies lay their eggs on the flower, flower dies, eggs die.
Click to expand...

Looks like you’re well prepared! I’m presuming that the apple cider vinegar traps are something like jars stood around collecting what’s attracted? How much ac vinegar is needed pls?
 
Dr.Al said:
I'm not convinced there is a good option. Most fly paper doesn't work that well and, as you say, isn't the nicest thing to have hanging in the house.

We've got one of these in the lounge and that works quite well, although for the biggest flies it just stuns them and you have to go and squish them in a tissue afterwards. It's not the best solution (the best solution would involve them not coming into the house in the first place), but I'm not sure there is one really.
Click to expand...
We've got a couple of those. My wife detests them as well but when we do get a few zooming around we generally open all the windows and they soon find their way out. If not they get zapped and sizzled - Rob
 
I don't like fly sprays either, but I do have a bottle of water with a few drops of detergent in it. Spray it on the fly, the can no longer fly, because it is now wet and I can simply pick it up and squish it. It's still not very nice but at least no nasty chemicals are involved.
The detergent is import to break the surface tension of the water, otherwise the fly doesn't actually get wet.

We live in the county and they are a constant pest. A couple of weeks ago we found a baby House Martin outside the front door, looking to be at death's door. I'd have let nature take its course, but my partner, Softie, brought it in and has nurtured it back to health. We are just waiting for him to learn to fly.
So for two weeks we have been swatting flies and collecting him for Paul (because he's a House Martin - appently it's a musical joke). The neighbours bring us theirs. It's a full time job. No wonder new parents are always knackered.
 
Four main pain in the arse flies here, black fly, mosquito, deer fly and horse fly. Black flies are done for the year. For outdoor work I will slather on repellent if they are bothering me. Nothing works with the other two.
We always make sure the dogs are towelled off before letting them in which helps keep the population inside down.
Paddle style bug zappers do work well.
I don't get reactions to being bitten but my wife will welt up and scratch.
Often I will fill the bedroom with spray shut the door then air out the room before bed.
 
RogerS said:
It doesn't. DAMHIKT
Click to expand...
I heard a while ago that Avon changed the formulation of Skin-so-Soft & that reduced its effectiveness. I've since heard they went back to the original formulation & it's better again, but take all of the above with a big pinch of salt as it's all hearsay.
 
Do not under estimate the power of flying insects, the midge repelled the Roman army and they had to build a wall instead. Maybe a different outcome had the Romans wore trousers !
 
Mike G said:
It does. DAMHIKT.......other than years of exploring Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Zim, as well as a 6 month trans Africa exp[edition.
Click to expand...
Ok…doesn’t work on midges or Northumberland black flies ! DAMHIKT either 😉
 
Those black flies are probably hawthorn flies, also known as the St Mark's fly and are just annoying as they don't bite. What they dislike apparently is mint.
 
SamQ aka Ah! Q! said:
I loved DEET until it dissolved plastic fittings on some of our gear....😳 and we had it on our skin....😯
Click to expand...
Friend of mine used some super strong deet in Brasil and it melted her flip flops while she sat in a bar. Stood up and they fell off her feet!
UK stuff is generally 50% deet, I bought some 95% deet in Thailand and that part melted the plastic sensor on the back of my fitbit one everning!

Horrific stuff, but does the job...
 
The electric UV light machines that are used in butcher's shops are extremely effective, especially if well positioned in a line of flight and sight. i have one in our prep room and one in my workshop. The bulbs last about a year. They deal with all sizes and types of fly. Around £40 and upwards from places such as river shop.
 
What's seems to work around here for outdoor sitting areas is a propane unit that atracts mosquitos and black flies which get trapped into a collector. I can't remember the name of the unit.
 
Screens. On the windows. On the doors. On bathroom extractor fans. Even on internal doors. Defence in depth. Then a plain old vacuum cleaner for the odd midge or fly that makes it through.
 
duke said:
Surely it's standard to have at least screens on windows and sliding patio doors over your way?
Click to expand...
Not really a thing over here, that I've ever seen. But I'm not really well travelled. I went camping to a place near a river once and wondered why a few people had nets over their heads and every camping spot had a metal basket for burning logs. Didnt take long to realise why, midges. We lasted a couple of hrs then packed up and went home.
 
duke said:
Surely it's standard to have at least screens on windows and sliding patio doors over your way?
Click to expand...
As Wallace says not common over here, as a kid living fairly rurally I remember neighbours having fly curtains which were basically plastic ribbons that hung down in front of the door, not seen one for years but a quick search of the tinternet shows they are still available,
Screenshot
IMG_2346.jpeg
 
duke said:
Surely it's standard to have at least screens on windows and sliding patio doors over your way?
Click to expand...
No. I've never seen it in the UK. I grew up in Australia where this was standard.........but the flies were the size of crows and as numerous as grains of sand in the Sahara.
 
I have persuaded her majesty to give house room to harvestmen.
We only disturb their webs when they get dusty or in annoying places.
In the warm weather our bifold is often open until dusk so we have one of these adjacent, to deter the mozzies.

Boots Repel Mosquito Killer 3 Pin Plug-In - Boots

Buy Boots Repel Mosquito Killer 3 Pin Plug-In collect Advantage Card Points for every £1 you spend.
www.boots.com www.boots.com
 
Doug said:
As Wallace says not common over here, as a kid living fairly rurally I remember neighbours having fly curtains which were basically plastic ribbons that hung down in front of the door, not seen one for years but a quick search of the tinternet shows they are still available,
Screenshot
View attachment 34349
Click to expand...
I vividly remember my Paternal Grandma having a multi coloured version of that over the back door during summer probably 45 years ago now.

Not a chance in hell that my better half would contemplate one.
 
I distinctly remember at one point in my childhood thinking that one of those fly curtains, either red and white or blue and white, in the front door was the butcher's equivalent of a rotating barber's pole. Every butcher I knew of had them, and I'd never seen them anywhere else.

Nowadays of course everyone keeps the door closed and relies on air conditioning instead of cross ventilation to cool down in summer. There's one shop near me that uses a metal chain version, but how much of that is for function and how much for aesthetics I'm not sure.
 
Our neighbours have an aluminium chain Butcher's Curtain over their door and they say it works, so I've ordered one the same.
At the same time, I've ordered a 4KV zapper.
We'll see.
S
 
So if you have a listed home which never had window screens and decided to install such , would this be in violation?
 
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