What’s flying around inside your house?
Springtime is an excellent time of year for Corpus Christi, but along with wildflowers and sleeping with the windows open, it also means a return of flying insects. Below we’ll look at a few of the different insects that may be bugging you inside your home.
Fruit flies
Fruit flies are small gnat-like insects that are attracted to the smell of ripe fruit and other organic materials. You may find them around fruit bowls, bananas or your indoor compost containers. The best way to eliminate them is to make sure to refrigerate all ripe fruit and keep your composting materials outside. If you still have trouble with them, you can make a simple trap with apple cider vinegar (or flat beer) and a narrow-necked bottle. Put a small amount of vinegar in the bottle and cover tightly with plastic wrap and a rubber band. Poke tiny holes in the plastic and the flies, who can’t resist the smell of the fermented liquid, will fly inside and get trapped in the bottle.
Fungus gnats
These little gnats love to swarm around your houseplants and lay their eggs in the moist soil. To eliminate them, allow your houseplants to dry out a bit between watering. If this doesn’t work, another trick you can try is adding a half-inch or so of sand to the surface of your potted plants. Sand dries out more quickly than soil and can deter gnats from laying eggs. You can also try using yellow sticky fly traps.
Drain flies
Photo by Sanjay Acharya
Ever find tiny black-winged bugs flying around your bathtub or sink drains, fish tanks or washing machines? These insects, often confused with fruit flies, are drain flies, and they breed in damp organic matter and debris in pipes In some cases cleaning the pipes and drains will discourage them, but sometimes it’s hard to find where they are breeding. If you have trouble with drain flies, ABC Home and Commercial Services Corpus Christi can do a thorough inspection of your plumbing and recommend an action plan to eliminate them.
House flies
House flies can drive you nuts. To get rid of them, first, remove all exposed food sources in your kitchen, and take out all garbage. If that doesn’t do the trick, there are flying insect sprays as well as sticky and electronic flying insect traps that should solve your house fly problem.
Mosquitoes
Blood-sucking mosquitoes are both an annoyance and a potential health threat. They’re bad enough to deal with when you’re outside, but what do you do when they get inside your home? Using tea tree, camphor, mint or citronella essential oils in a diffuser can kill mosquitoes indoors and discourage more from entering.
Mosquito hawks
These giant insects look like giant mosquitoes, but they aren’t actually related. Unlike the mosquito, they do not sting and are entirely harmless. They only live a few days once they reach the adult stage, so mosquito hawks pose only a minor annoyance when they enter our homes.
Wasps
Despised by many homeowners, wasps often build their nests under eaves or in entryways. If you find a nest that isn’t close to your doors or patio, leave it where it is. Like bees, wasps are important pollinators, and they feed on garden insect pests. However, if the nest is close to a door or patio, try a nighttime application of a flying insect pesticide.
How to prevent these pests in your home.
- Keep windows closed, or use quality screens without any holes or gaps.
- Limit how often exterior doors are opened.
- Keep an eye on fruits and vegetables stored out in the open.
- Use flying insect traps, particularly yellow sticky traps or electronic traps.
- Avoid the use of spray repellents indoors whenever possible, as they can be difficult to use correctly, can harm beneficial insects and other wildlife, and can leave pesticide residue in areas that children and pets frequent.
When to call out the experts about pests.
At ABC Home and Commercial Services Corpus Christi, we specialize in ridding your home of all unwanted pests, including flying insects. We can remove wasp nests safely, and our experts can also offer solutions to combat your flying insect problems with minimal harm to the environment and your home.