While there is no official headcount, local pest control experts Kiwicare explain the late spring weather conditions were good news for flies.
“We’ve had the perfect combination of warmth and humidity leading into summer,” says Jane McCarrison, Kiwicare’s general manager of marketing and sales.
“Usually, if you’ve had a warmer spring, it’s going to be a particularly bad fly season.
“Because of the lack of rainfall ... flies, which have a breeding cycle of six to seven days, have longer periods where they can breed and multiply without being washed out.”
Not only have flies had more time to breed, the common house fly (the ones that are about 1cm long and feed off dry waste) can get fatter.
“Because there’s good conditions, it means that there will be not only more flies, but they will be bigger because of that longer stretch of time,” McCarrison says.
Flies are already bugging Kiwis around New Zealand. Photo / 123rf
McCarrison has anecdotal evidence to stack up the science, such as a 20% rise in sales of their fly control products compared to this time last year. However, there’s no official way to know if there are more flies, or it just feels like it.
“It’s not wrong, it’s just not proven,” explains Dr Julia Kasper, an entomologist and lead curator of invertebrates at Te Papa.
Kasper says it does make sense to be seeing more blowflies as they could be adapting better to urban environments and there are more people living closer together.
“It would definitely help blow flies to adapt and to increase in numbers,” she says.
Kasper wonders if there are other factors at play here and we’re just not very tolerant.
“I think people just forget how it was last summer.
“If something is annoying it feels like, ‘Oh my God, this is so bad and it has never been so bad before’.”
Keep bins in check and away from the door so that you’re not luring flies in. Keep surfaces free of food scraps and waste to remove potential breeding sites and break the fly life cycle, McCarrison says.
“They breed everywhere, house flies ... they can even breed under tea towels and things like that at home.”
If you have a problem with flies in your clean and tidy home, McCarrison suggests setting up a fly control system that will automatically spray a mist (safe for pets and children) to kill the insects.
Or you could tackle the problem head-on with a bug bomb that you set off before heading out for a couple of hours. You return, wipe down surfaces and should have a bug-free home for up to six months.
Kasper, as a passionate ally of the fly, has a more relaxed approach. She doesn’t see a problem with more flies and definitely doesn’t want people going around spraying them.
“Maybe relax around flies and just tolerate them,” she says.
Or encourage natural enemies to your backyard – like birds that eat bugs.
“I wouldn’t do anything to be honest, for that question, you’re asking the wrong person because I love them.
“We really need to appreciate what the insects do for us.”
