Flying Insect Control: a Cape Town guide

Know what you are dealing with

The house fly and the lesser house fly are the everyday nuisance indoors, while blowflies show up in force wherever there is meat waste, a dead rodent in a ceiling or overflowing bins. Fruit flies and drain flies are the small ones that hover around fruit bowls, bar drip trays and bathroom drains, and they breed in a film of organic muck rather than in the open. Culex mosquitoes bite at night across the Cape Flats and along the vleis and canals, and Aedes species turn up where water sits in pot plant saucers and blocked gutters. The European paper wasp, Polistes dominula, is an invasive species that has spread through the Western Cape and builds open umbrella nests under eaves and in garden furniture. Indian meal moths and clothes moths round out the list indoors, one in the pantry and the other in the wardrobe.

Myths, mistakes and lesser-known facts

If a cloud of big shiny flies suddenly appears in one room, check the ceiling. A rat or bird that died in the roof is the usual cause, and the flies stop once the carcass is removed.

For landlords, flying insect complaints often come down to maintenance: a cracked drain, a missing window screen or a bin area that floods. Fixing those is cheaper than repeat treatments.

With small children and pets in the house, we lean heavily on physical fixes, baits placed out of reach and drain treatments, and keep spraying to the places that really need it.

Warning signs

1. Flies keep gathering around the same window, light or rubbish area even after you have cleaned and sprayed.
2. Tiny moth-like flies sit on bathroom walls near the shower or basin drain.
3. Small flies hover over the fruit bowl, the recycling bin or the drip tray under a bar tap.
4. You hear whining at night and wake up with fresh bites on exposed arms and ankles.
5. Paper wasps are coming and going from the same spot under the eaves, a gutter or a garden umbrella.
6. A sudden swarm of large blowflies appears indoors, which often points to something dead in the roof or wall.
7. Small moths flutter out of the pantry or out of a cupboard full of woollens.

House flies and blowflies land on rubbish and faeces and then on food, so they move bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli onto surfaces you eat from. Mosquitoes are mostly a nuisance and a cause of poor sleep in the Western Cape, but bites can become infected when children scratch them. Paper wasps sting readily when a nest is bumped, which is a real concern for anyone allergic to stings. For food businesses, visible flies are one of the quickest ways to fail a health inspection or lose a customer.

Can you do it yourself?

Fly swatters, screens and a good bin routine handle a lot of household fly problems, and we would rather you did that than empty a can of spray into the kitchen. Where DIY falls down is when the source is hidden, like a dead rat in the ceiling, a broken drain under the floor or a wasp nest in a wall cavity. If you are still seeing the same insects two weeks after cleaning up, the breeding site is somewhere you have not found yet.

Seasonal pattern

Flying insects peak from about October to March, when hot weather speeds up breeding and a fly can go from egg to adult in around a week. The south-easter keeps numbers down on the exposed side of the city but pushes flies indoors in sheltered suburbs, and mosquitoes often surge after the last winter rains leave water lying around. Wasps build their nests in spring and are at their most defensive in late summer when colonies are biggest.

Prevention checklist

• Fit fly screens on kitchen windows and keep a self-closing door or strip curtain on back doors that open onto bins.
• Pour boiling water down slow drains weekly and scrub the inside of the drain pipe with a brush, since that slime is where drain flies breed.
• Keep wheelie bins closed, rinse them out in summer, and park them away from the kitchen door.
• Tip out pot plant saucers, birdbaths and anything else that holds water for more than a few days.
• Store flour, cereal and pet food in sealed containers so pantry moths have nothing to breed in.
• Check eaves, carports and garden furniture in early spring for small paper wasp nests while they are still easy to deal with.

What affects the price

The price depends on which insect we are treating, because a single wasp nest is a very different job from a fly problem in a large food factory. The size of the property, how many breeding sites there are and how hard they are to get at, such as roof voids or sealed drains, all affect the time on site. Commercial sites with light traps and scheduled visits are usually best quoted as a contract, and we give free quotes once we know what is flying.

Frequently asked questions

Areas we cover for flying insect control