Blue bottle flies (Calliphora vomitoria), also known as blow flies, are a common household pest that can be quite a nuisance. These flies are attracted to decaying organic matter, particularly rotting meat or faeces.
As a result of the blue bottle’s attraction to rotting matter, it can pick up and transmit a variety of diseases such as typhoid, E.coli, Staphylococcus, and Dysentery, among others. It’s no wonder you might want to get rid of this fly from your home or business.
A blue bottle infestation can spread rapidly because the female can lay up to 3000 eggs in her relatively short 6-week lifespan. Getting blue bottles under control quickly, can greatly aid your effort to get rid of them successfully.
How to get rid of blue bottle flies
As with any pest issue, prevention is better than cure. There are some simple measures you can take to prevent blue bottles, and other actions you can take to get rid of them, which we’ll discuss here.
Blue Bottle Fly Prevention
First off, let’s discuss preventative measures you can take against blue bottles.
Cleanliness is Key
One of the best ways to prevent blue bottle flies from infesting your home is to keep it clean. This means disposing of food waste properly, cleaning up pet poop quickly, and ensuring that rubbish bins containing food waste are tightly sealed and bags put outside daily. These flies are guided by odours and can smell rotting meat from miles away, so eliminating the source of the smell will prevent blue bottles from coming into the premisses.
Seal Entry Points
Preventing blue bottle flies from entering your home is another effective way to keep them out. Seal any cracks or crevices in your home’s exterior to prevent flies from getting inside. Most commonly, flies enter UK homes via open windows and doors. The way to manage this is to install screens on windows and doors to keep flies from entering, or simply keep them closed. Fly screens are commonplace in the US, but in the UK they are being slowly adopted as an excellent preventative solution.
Blue Bottle Fly Removal
Eliminate Breeding Sites
The most effective way to get rid of blue bottle flies is to remove the thing that’s attracting them.
Blue bottle flies are attracted to decaying organic matter, particularly meat (including carcasses such as those of dead rodents, squirrels, or birds) so eliminating potential breeding sites is critical. This means you would need to do a thorough search for dead animals on your property. Places to look for dead animals would be attics, behind kitchen units, and even in walls.
Cleaning up pet poop immediately and removing meat-based pet or human food and food waste from the property promptly can play an important part in getting rid of blue bottles.
Avoid leaving meat out. If you need to defrost meat from the freezer, do so in the fridge. You’ll need to take it out of the freezer sooner as it will take longer in the fridge to defrost than it would at room temperature.
Always be conscious of meat disposal, ensuring that no meat sits in your indoor bins. If you’ve just placed some meat in the bin, take the bin out. Alternatively, take meat products outside directly, first wrapping them tightly in a smaller plastic bag.
Use Insecticides
If you’re dealing with a severe infestation, insecticidal fly sprays can be an effective solution. It’s worth noting that fly sprays may be toxic to pets and humans, so you should be cautious of where you spray it, and what comes into contact with the spray, i.e, cooking utensils, kitchen work surfaces, etc.
UV-A lights
UV-A lights are excellent at attracting flies such as blue bottles. There are many UV-A fly catchers available to order online. Just do a quick Google search. Most variants of these products would need to be fixed to a wall that’s out of reach, and they need to be connected to a power supply. The way the UV-A light traps work is they attract the flies with the light, and then when the fly goes to the light it gets zapped.
While these traps are great at removing adult flies, they obviously don’t work on the maggots and don’t tend to resolve the root of the matter – the rotting organic matter.
Pest control
If you haven’t resolved your blue bottle problem after having tried all the DIY removal techniques and preventative measures, or you just want a sure-fire solution, it might be time to call in the pros. When you call Merlin in to get rid of your blue bottles, we’ll always be able to find the source of the problem and put into place a solution to either remove the attractant or remove the flies’ access to it, depending on your preference. Get in touch with us for help now (UK and Ireland only) or learn more about our fly removal service.
