For your Home
Login or register for the customer portal
© 2024 Rentokil Initial plc and subject to the conditions in the legal statement.
If you were to ask the average person how long they think a fly lives, more likely than not they will tell you they only live about 24 hours. This is a common misconception, but it's not true of most flies that people have to deal with around their home. House flies and other larger flies that usually infest a house can live for days, maybe even months. Mayflies, however, usually only have a 24 hour lifespan.
Flies can contaminate food and cause other problems. Rather than trying to wait out a fly lifespan, it's better to get rid of flies using the professional treatments offered by Ehrlich Pest Control fly specialists. Contact your local Ehrlich Pest Control office today and schedule a property inspection.
A fly goes through for stages of life.
It all starts when a female fly finds a place favorable to lay eggs. A female fly likes to find a spot where the larvae can feed for a time, so it will lay eggs on rotting wood or food. Some species of fly also lay eggs on corpses of animals or other rotting flesh. The average female fly can lay anywhere upwards of 150 eggs at a time, which is why you can quickly end up with a fly infestation in your home or on your property. These eggs look like very small grains of rice.
Once the eggs hatch, they come out as limbless white creatures known as maggots. They will feast on the rotting food or flesh around them to continue to grow. Maggots can remain in this larval stage for anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days.
The fly maggot then enters the pupal stage, which is a lot different from the larval stage. Fly pupae appear larger, and their skin changes color, often yellow, red, brown or black and no longer look as cylindrical as they do as maggots. The fly pupa try to find a quiet, dark, place to go through this stage. During this stage, flies start to develop wings, legs and the rest of the shape of your average house fly.
Finally, the fly turns into an adult. They will then fly off and find places to feed and, eventually, for a new place to lay eggs and start the process all over again.
The fact that a house fly can live a lot longer than 24 hours means you might have to deal with a fly infestation for an extended period of time. Flies a can contaminate both food and food preparation surfaces. Trying to deal with a fly infestation on your own could lead to more flies and more potential health risks.
Ehrlich Pest Control specialists know how to find where the flies are coming from. Flies could be entering your property from the drains or inside the walls . There also might be gaps within your siding, roof, or holes in the exterior of your home that allow flies to get inside.
Ehrlich Pest Control specialists will do a full property inspection and find all of the probable locations for where flies are laying their eggs. We will then initiate a treatment plan to get rid of flies around your home and property and offer solutions that will keep flies away for good.
Contact your local Ehrlich Pest Control office to discuss the problems you are having with flies.
The most common fly that most homeowners have to deal with is the house fly. The house fly follows the same general life cycle as that listed above. They lay eggs in something particularly nasty, become maggots, then pupa and then adult flies. If enough of the eggs survive, you end up with a house filled with a lot of flies.
On average, a housefly can live around 20-25 days. Sometimes they can live up to a month.
Book your FREE pest control inspection online
Whether called drain flies, sewer flies, moth flies or something else, these tiny flies can be a problem.