Bluebottle Infestation (help!)

R&C

I seem to have/had a bluebottle infestation in my kitchen! The flies are very dosile and are just sitting on the kitchen window, they're very slow to fly so very easy to kill thankfully! Apparently this is a sign of recently hatched flies, eek!

After doing a bit of googling it appears that an adult female would only feed on dead or decaying organic matter - meat, feaces, etc and lay her eggs in this place. We've had the cooker, fridge, washing machine out, plus checked all the cupboards etc and found nothing dead at all. We did however find aout 15-20 little brown hard casings behind the fridge, which I have read is the 'pupa' stage before they hatch into flies. There was nothing dead behind the fridge but I do remember a box of cereal fell over and a small amount spilled down the back so thought maybe it's possible for them to lay eggs on any food? Anyway, we hoovered them up and emptied the hoover thinking everything would be ok now, BUT I've just googled the life cycle of a bluebottle and apparently maggots travel to a DRY (ie behind my fridge amongst the cereal!) place before disappearing into these hard casings. So now I'm worried that I still have something dead or decaying in my kitchen somewhere, even though we've thoroughly looked and cleaned! Would the maggots have eaten it all, whatever it was? I'm hoping they would have done, as if there is something somewhere that we can't seem to find then it's obviously going to attract flies again!

In the last couple of days I have killed 200+ flies, apparently they take 2 weeks to become 'sexually mature' so I'm assuming we're in the clear re more eggs being laid. I'm hoping that the 15-20 pupa we hoovered away was the last and we don't get anymore, but I guess my question is basically about the maggots eating whatever they were born into?!

Anyone had any experience of this?

Gloomendoom

Bluebottles lay eggs on decaying flesh... not cereals.

It's an unpleasant thought but have you got a dead mouse or rat under the floorboards?

diable

Do you have a recycling bin in the kitchen for food waste?

R&C

Hi yes thanks I realised that after googling, it's just we couldn't find anything 'fleshy' so thought perhaps they could in cereal, then obviously relaised that they'd just chosen the cereal as a dry place to pupate in, so the decaying matter must be somewhere else! Unless it gets eaten entirely by the maggots when they hatch from the eggs? This is the main thing I'd like to find out, because then I can rest a bit that with killing them so quickly and getting rid of the casings then it should just clear up. If we still have something rotting somewhere that we can't seem to find for some reason however, it's just goign to attract more flies! The kitchen has a concrete floor so there can't be anything lurking below.

Diable - we DID have a seperate recycling bin in the kitchen, but when we had really hot weather back in May time we had a lot of flies (not the amount we've had the last couple of days, just general flies coming in from outside) so we emptied it into our main wheelie bin outside and kept left overs inside to a minimum! Presumably the flies could have laid eggs in the bin but when it was removed wouldn't that have just gotten rid of them?

So far have only had 2 on the window today, but it was like that yesterday morning and by 4pm when I got home there was loads!

jrrowleyws

Do you have kickboards around the base of your cupboards? These are usually just clipped to the legs of your units and can be pulled off... might be worth a look under there.

When I had a fly issue, they were coming down a chimney and it was pretty rank so I sympathise with the situation!

R&C

Hi,
Thanks for your reply. We've removed the kickboards to check and nothing there either!

We actually have an old chimney breast in the kitchen, it's an old house and I think a boiler of some sort used to be there. We have a worktop that sort of sits half way underneath the flue though so I'd have thought that we'd have had maggots dropping onto the work tops (ewww!) and would have noticed them, but I guess anything is possible!

I think we'll see how we get on today and then think about getting someone in to check the chimney for us. We go away in 3 weeks and I'm hoping we don't come back to a major problem! I think the 2 weeks we are away would probably be long enough for them to hatch, mate, and lay eggs *shudder*

I'm so mortified this is happening, the kitchen is clean but really doesn't feel it!

andygb

As a short term solution, try cleaning the worktops and cupboard doors with a citrus based cleaner, because flies co not like citric acid.
We found this out years ago, when our whole area had a fly infestation due to the local farmer using a certain organic treatment on his crops.

pimento

Do you have cat/dog food out?

Errata

We actually have an old chimney breast in the kitchen, it's an old house and I think a boiler of some sort used to be there.

Dead bird in the chimney can cause the problem you have with bluebottles.