July Pest of the Month: Flies
Flies are a common nuisance pest, particularly during the summer months. While they are often found in homes, their presence in businesses can have a more significant impact. The sight and constant buzzing of flies can create an unpleasant experience for your customers, potentially harming your business’s reputation and leading to a loss in revenue. At Urban Pest Control, we offer a range of fly control solutions to address fly infestations and provide products to prevent flies from becoming an issue.
Interesting facts about flies:
- Flies have the ability to walk upside down due to their feet, which contain two pads with tiny hairs. These hairs produce a glue-like substance that gives flies excellent grip.
- The compound eyes of flies consist of thousands of individual lenses, providing them with 360° vision.
- Flies have a short lifespan, typically living for 15-25 days. However, they reproduce rapidly.
- A female fly lays around 100 eggs at a time, and despite mating only once, they can reproduce 5-6 times.
- Fly eggs hatch within 12-24 hours, and maggots emerge. These maggots feed at their hatching site for 3-5 days before pupating in a cool and dark environment for 3-6 days. They then develop wings and grow into adulthood. After 2-3 days, the females are ready to reproduce.
- Flies are capable of transmitting over 100 different pathogens to humans, including salmonellosis, typhoid, and E. coli.
How to recognise you have a fly issue:
- Warmer weather often leads to an increase in the presence of flies.
- Flies are attracted to buildings by air currents and odours.
- Damaged or weathered structures can provide entry points for flies if doors and windows are not easily accessible.
- Climate change is resulting in flies being present for longer periods.
- Finding small dark clusters of spots roughly the size of a pinhead on surfaces. This is fly faeces and indicates an infestation.
How to prevent flies:
If your business is involved in food production and hospitality, it is crucial to have regular fly control management in place. Flies easily spread diseases as they land on waste materials, faeces, and decaying substances. When they subsequently land on food, work surfaces, or utensils, they transfer pathogens through their legs. The Food Safety Act 1999 requires a pest management plan to prevent contamination by flying insect pests. Failure to have a plan in place can result in drops in food hygiene rating scores and, in severe cases, legal consequences such as the closure of premises, fines, or prosecutions from the Food Standards Agency or Environmental Health. Waste sites also need to have a fly management plan according to regulations.
Urban Pest Control offers effective commercial fly management plans tailored to your specific site. We work with you to identify problem areas using fly monitoring, provide advice, implement preventative measures, and eliminate adult flies and breeding sites using insecticides. Our program minimises the risk of flies developing resistance to insecticides by regularly rotating professional-grade products.
We utilise high-powered backpack misters to apply a residual spray directly to waste materials, ensuring immediate fly knockdown. Our use of the latest professional equipment, such as ultra-low volume technology, delivers effective results.
Our friendly and reliable team can supply, install, and service a wide range of electronic fly killer units suitable for various business needs, from small kitchens to large commercial premises. We offer annual tube renewal and servicing packages for electronic fly killers, along with regular visits and written documentation to help you comply with Food Safety Regulations. Our new industry-leading UV LED fly killer units feature shatterproof tubes, attracting flying insects while offering sustainability through low running costs (75% less energy usage) and extended tube lifespan (average replacement every 3 years).
Other treatment methods for fly infestations, such as the ULV fogging machine, are available and should only be used by professional and qualified pest technicians like ourselves.
For more information on flies, their treatments, and our fly control management plans for businesses in Poole, Bournemouth, Christchurch, Dorchester, Weymouth, and other local surrounding areas, please don’t hesitate to contact us or arrange a site survey.
