Also, Windex blue kills but not instantly. Spray pine sol (or cheap immitation of pine cleaner) drops em instantly. However they come back.

I have reviewed all the comments here I think I will try the zip lock with pennies and then I will check out the screens on windows and calk them.

I never had fly problem till yesterday when I killed about 20 of them and could not figure out where they were coming from. There are two windows in my kitchen where they seem to be coming in.

I have an orange tree in my yard and I am a new gardner, but the flies are no where near the food! It is amazing to me. They are not even entering the kitchen just congregating at these particular windows.

So I will put up the zip lock bags, fix gaps and let you know how that worked for me.

Thanks I love the internet!

We have a small domestic farm and since the beginning of this summer FLIES are everywhere! We couldn’t sit on the front porch without being pelted with flies. I used fly sprays, other chemicals, bleached the cement porch…all this worked for about 3 or less hours and suddenly swarms of flies again! My husband read about zip-lock bags full of water and I laughed and said OKAY I will try anything. Put two bags on the front porch and NOT A SINGLE FLY ALL DAY AND NIGHT LONG!! I am still perplexed by this concept…I put two bags on the kitchen counter and one on a coffee table in the living room; NO STINKING FLIES ARE ANYWHERE I HAVE THE BAGS. AGAIN, NONE! I was a nay-Sayer on this and really, really believed this was a hokey thing…but it worked for us!

I swear by the plastic bag of water trick I have them on side porch ( our house entry) and all around the basement door. We saw these in Northeast Mo at an Amish grocery store & have used them since. They say it works because a fly sees a reflection & won’t come around.

Regarding the science behind zip log bags of water? My research found that each of the millions of molecules of water presents its own prism effect and given that flies have a lot of eyes, to them it’s like a zillion disco balls reflecting light, colors and movement in a dizzying manner. When you figure that flies are basically prey for many other bugs, animals, birds, etc., they simply won’t take the risk of being around that much perceived action. I moved to a rural area ant thought these “hillbillies” were just yanking my city boy chain but I tried it, worked immediately! We went from hundreds of flies to seeing the occasional one, but he don’t hang around long.

What if the flies are all over the siding outside by the deck how do you keep them of that . They are there everyday insun or cloudy what can we do

Zip lock!! It really worked for us!!! So sick of flys … tried the bag (closed not open that’s why it specified ‘zip lock’)… it’s hanging down from the middle of our back double sliding doors and no more flies … another tip … try burning incense … smells nice and works like citronella. Now I can do my cooking in peace … (but what about kids?)

I have a recurring horse fly problem. No food source, they seem attracted to my two picture windows in my living room. There were about 100 baby flies last June with many huge flys on this window, I thought I would go crazy. Got them all with a fly swatter…..but now,7 months later we have huge horse flys on the inside of the same windows. Why are they coming there. They aren’t in the kitchen, there are no dead animals or food source in that area at all. I have killed about 10 the past 5 days and by the way, it’s been below zero here……anyone have a clue what is going on?

little tiny flies are in my house we have cleaned it and cleaned again ..we tried clorox to set in the trap below the sink and let it set overnight we have a garbarater by the way we live in an apt

I live in an older apartment with a really unstable roof. I know for a fact that there are squirrels living in the attic. Anyways, we’ve been experiencing an epidemic of these huge slow black flies buzzing around our house. I believe they are feeding on something dead or diseased because i can swat them with my hand and they fall to the floor dead. Unfortunately Im not, nor are any of my roommates, willing to open the attic and go up there. Ive also found a whole bunch of them in the snow on my balcony which seems really odd. Does anyone have any advice?

I need help badly. I own a photography studio and last week we had our first sign of a fly. It is only in the studio no other room, doors and windows are sealed, there is no garbage, and we are killing around 20-40 a day. We have got storage heaters in the room but they were turned off when we thought they were the cause of the problem. Freezing in there now.

Any ideas how to find where they are breeding ?

So I have just read all the comments. It seems all the comments relate to summer flies. It is November and when the temp warms up a little to about 60 degrees my house fills with flies. I don’t have them in the summer, just spring, autumn and winter…..?I live in Maryland horse country. When I returned home last night, there must have been 500 flies in the house. And this is after removal of all of them the day before! Are the zip lock bags a good autumn and winter repellant as well? I have no trash in the house whatsoever and the house staged and is for sale. Are they trying to come in for warmth? Do you put multiple bags up in the same areas? Over every window? Or just one bag per area? Why do they choose my house and not my neighbors’? Truly, there is no uncleanliness at all.

I did tried the ziplock bag and pennies this weekend. I have a horse trailer with full LQ. The flys were very bad this weekend while I was camping. I put the baggie with pennies above the door of the LQ. NOT ONE FLY came in the trailer. The horse trailer part had many. Not sure why it works but it does!!!!!!!

I will tell you what kills flies almost instantly…WINDEX!!!!!
I use the yellow antibact. kind of Windex. I spray them and they FALL RIGHT THERE!!!!
I have no idea why this works, but if I have nothing around, I grab the windex, spray them and they die. TRY IT!!!!

I followed a lot of tips on this page and some of the traps seemed to work, but it was never enough. Also, all that fly paper and bowls of dish soap and sugar filled with dead flies was ugly and disgusting to have around. Trying to impress friends is a lot easier when they aren’t constantly reminded of your horrendous infestation.

My solution? BUY A PITCHER PLANT!!!

Pitcher Plants work like a liquid trap. They entice the flies (all kinds, big small, fruit, house…) to enter and then they get trapped in the liquid and slowly digested. Within ONE NIGHT of owning the plant we were suddenly missing 90%+ of our pest problem. The plant is also attractive and a nice conversation piece you can be proud of.

Pitcher plants are not expensive (mine was less than $10 and will continue working and living for years) They are almost zero maintenance needing no fertilizer, a small pot, and minimal watering. The best part, they can be found almost anywhere! I found mine in the flowers section of my local Meijer! (Wal-Mart carries them too)

P.S. Don’t waste your time or money on the Venus Fly Traps (usually located near the Pitcher Plants). They can only catch one fly at a time in their “mouths” and sometimes the trip hairs are not sensitive enough for fruit flies. Pitcher Plants on the other hand will keep on filling up no matter what crawls in there.
P.P.S. Cat’s are not too much of a problem. Our felines showed little interest in the plant.

I have read here about people with “infestations” of flies and having to kill “20 to 30″ a day. That is not an infestation!!! I live in southern Spain and at this time of the year we will have literally hundreds of flies in the house. After a long hot, dry summer we will get a few days of quite heavy rain, but it the weather is till hot. The fly population just seems to explode at this time and we use a combination of probably all of the methods mentioned on this blog. The most effective immediately is fly spray. However, a really good way of preventing them comeing into your home is to install a misting system that runs around the perimeter of the house. This creates a curtain of fine spray through which the flies will not venture. It is not cheap but it is definitely the most effective system I have found.

Fill a ziplock bag with water and 5 or 6 pennies and hang it in the problem area. In my case it was a particular window in my home. It had a slight but significant passage way for insects.Every since I have done that, it has kept flies and wasps away. Some say, that wasps and flies mistake the bag for some sort of other insect nest and are threatened by this.

Close the Ziplock bag… it really works to keep us pests away!

I heard that a plastic shopping bag, filled with water and a coin in the bottom resemble a hornets nest. I guess hornets are a predator to the fly?

We live behind a Black Angus Farm. Needless to say, we have FLIES!! Some days are worse than others like very HOT days. We have been using those STINKY, SMELLY, GAWD AWFUL traps with the bait. They really do work and we have them in almost every tree on our peramiter of property. We also have them hanging just by the patio which really help but if you get just right and get a whiff of it, you gag. It really smells like something dead that is rotting.

the plastic bag trick DOES work to keep them out of the house. Sandwich size zip-lock half full of water tacked to the outer door frame.

With all of this we STILL get them however and some days we just cannot even eat out there even though we LOVE our patio and being outside.

Would anyone suggest a zapper? If so, what brand/type…

Thanks….signed bugged in Idaho