Preventing Fly Infestations

Whether it’s your local family restaurant, a four star hotel, your local pub, or a health care facility, there is no place that’s immune to developing fly infestations, if the conditions are right.  While they’re primarily nuisance pests, flies are a public health concern due to their habits of frequenting some very unsanitary places and then flying to your food with their dirty, bacteria infested bodies.

When we hear from our customers regarding a fly problem, it’s likely because they’re seeing adult flies popping up, sometimes in large numbers.  Whether they’re resting on the wall in the bakery, flying around the food or buzzing the customers, these pests must be dealt with quickly.

The small flies that we most commonly encounter at our accounts include fruit flies, phorid flies, drain flies and fungus gnats.  These flies are all relatively small flies, with an average size of about 1/8 of an inch long.  Each of these flies have one thing in common: they all require decaying organic matter in which to breed.  Additionally, each of these flies can establish huge populations indoors, as long as they have the right medium to breed in.

When a technician is called out to an account for a fly concern, there are certain steps that must be taken in order to gain control of these pests.  First, it is important to identify the fly in order to use its biology to uncover potential hot spots when doing an inspection.  Next, the breeding source or sources must be found.  And finally, the key to preventing fly infestations is good sanitation, so those breeding sources must be cleaned up once they are identified.

There are additional integrated pest management tools that can also aid in fly infestation elimination and prevention. For example, bioremediation can be used to break down the organic matter build-up in places like drains and broken tile.  Bioremediation treatments are not insecticides, but rather they will help to eliminate the fly breeding areas.

Insect light traps and spot applications (with pesticides) can be used to eliminate the adult flies that are present.  However, getting rid of adult flies alone will not solve the problem if the breeding sources still exist.

For advice and fly control information, contact your local Ehrlich branch.

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Do you have any questions about fly infestations? Ask away in the comments!