Flies are one of the insects that are a totally a nuisance to many people. Flies are carriers of deadly diseases and are fond of facilitating the spread of disease. Flies are very restless thus they hover between food and dirt thereby spreading diseases e.g meat and other food items. Flies live in habitats that provide a suitable environment.

Contamination

Flies are always attracted to food by their strong sense of smell. It’s surprising that flies feed on solid food directly. However, when a fly gets onto a solid food; it vomits on the food thereby creating a solution. The fly  then sucks the food. This is how it contaminates the food.

Diseases

Flies cause diseases like, typhoid, diarrhoea, dysentery, tuberculosis and cholera among many other diseases.

Preventive measures to undertake in the control of flies

As it’s always put, prevention is better than cure, hence it’s better to undertake preventive measures before infestation has taken place. This can be done by:

• Food should always be well covered since it can be contaminated by the flies upon coming into contact with it. This way stops the spread various kinds of diseases by flies since they will lack something to feed on.
• All food and liquid materials should always be cleaned upon spillage. This is because flies are known to have a good sense of smell for food.Hence, if left uncleaned; they shall become visitors into your home.
• All food debris under kitchen appliances should also be properly cleaned. Contrary to which flies will infest your home.
• People should also ensure that all their litter bins have properly lids that can be closed tightly. This will prevent the flies from establishing their breeding sites in the litter bins.
• The compost pit should always be covered and enclosed. This is because if they are left that way the flies will establish their breeding sites in them.
• One should always be cleaning up pets refuse; this is because faeces are not only good breeding places for flies but also a place where flies might land before getting onto your food

Control of house flies

In order to effectively control house flies one need to do various things:

• One should first find their breeding sources. Their most common breeding sources are food, animal and human waste dump areas, dump sites, garbage and compost heaps. Their sources may not be that close since others might be located up to five hundred meters away
• Once you have noticed their breeding places around you, take the objective of cleaning up the places. In addition the walls and floor should be properly cleaned using soap and water to remove the fly specks.

Other methods that can be employed include:

• Use of insect repellents like herbs of aromatic plants, smoke and fry repellent oil like eucalyptus oil.
• Second is the use of traps, for instance the human made fly trap made up of a jar, cone paper and sugar solution and the artificial fry trap that is sticky and poisonous. This traps the flies killing them.
• Third is the use of electrical methods for instance, the use of a handheld electrical fly swatter. This resembles a bad Minton bat. It’s usually charged to very high voltages and it has the capability of killing flies mid air upon turning it on.
• Use of chemical sprays like doom can also be employed. It’s very effective since it instantly kills the flies; however it has effect to the environment.
• Natural method includes the planting of insectivorous plants near your home for instance the Venus fly trap, or pitcher plant. This is a very environment friendly method.