House Flies - tips and tricks?

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Zee-Man

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Was it this thread or another where I linked the rotating fly trap? I've had it for a few days now, it has yet to catch a fly. Benefit of the doubt? There are only 3 flies in the house right now. The bait "basins" are pretty small, the bait dries up in a few hours. I've put peanut butter there instead.
 

Bike guy

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I had fungus knat problem in previous years because of my red worm bin but I had never house flies until I started to raise rabbits in my house 50 days ago. There are flyscreens in all my windows but somehow dozens of house flies apeared 10 days after I brought the rabbits. Their number increased, I tried sticky traps, bottle traps etc. and nothing worked. I have many kinds of insecticides and a large automatic sprayer for outdoor but I couldn't use it indoors because it is so powerfull that just a few seconds would be enough to spray a cup of insecticide. I could't use it, there are many plants in the house that I foraged for rabbits and many plants that in the process of drying. Also insecticides are not good for rabbits.

So I went old school and used a simple spray bottle, poured some insecticide in it, in my case benzyl benzoate. You can target the fly and nowhere else is effected. One by one I killed more than 100 flies within a week and my nightmare ended last week.
 

MaggieJ

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I suggest growing catnip (Nepeta cateria) in large quantities. Once established it will seed itself and provide a permanent supply. Flies and mosquitoes soon quit an area where a good bunch of bruised catnip is hung. It also works as an insect repellent when the leaves are crushed and rubbed on the skin.
 

MnCanary

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I suggest growing catnip (Nepeta cateria) in large quantities. Once established it will seed itself and provide a permanent supply. Flies and mosquitoes soon quit an area where a good bunch of bruised catnip is hung.....
Maggie, forgive me but I had doubts about N. cateria as an insect repellent. I looked it up, and it IS indeed an effective mosquito repellent. I got lost reading this article, especially with the essential oil extraction. But the conclusion is: it works. Repellency Assessment of Nepeta cataria Essential Oils and Isolated Nepetalactones on Aedes aegypti
 
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