Fly management Service
Can you think of anything nice to say about flies? Probably not. A band of notorious flies have earned themselves a well-deserved, bad reputation. First off, they invite themselves to our picnics and patio parties. We find them lapping up the ice cream, skipping across the potato salad, swimming in the cola, diving into the Jello salad and tickling through the hair on our arms. Sometimes they bite. And indoors they’re no better behaved. You can hardly be faulted for thinking all flies should be driven from the planet!
It may surprise you then to learn that the bad ones represent only a very small number of fly species. Fly expert Eria McAlister* reports there are an estimated 17 million flies in the world — per person! The vast majority, however, go unnoticed. And, unappreciated: Flies are valuable pollinators of crops and flowers. Flies are recyclers of plant and animal matter into organic nutrients. They’re also beneficial as predators of undesirable insects and are themselves a food source for other wildlife.
Adults of most species are active in daytime and feed on a wide variety of foods. At night, they rest, usually clinging to something several feet off the ground near their food source. Adults, depending on species, feed on nectar, sap, living or decaying plant or animal matter and dung. Some, like mosquitoes, feed on blood. Others, like crane flies, don’t feed at all as adults. Fly larvae feed on a wide variety of food sources, both plant and animal, with some being parasitic. The larvae of many species look like white rice and are the roiling masses of “maggots” we find feasting on rotting carcasses and garbage.
Adults of most species are active in daytime and feed on a wide variety of foods. At night, they rest, usually clinging to something several feet off the ground near their food source. Adults, depending on species, feed on nectar, sap, living or decaying plant or animal matter and dung. Some, like mosquitoes, feed on blood. Others, like crane flies, don’t feed at all as adults. Fly larvae feed on a wide variety of food sources, both plant and animal, with some being parasitic. The larvae of many species look like white rice and are the roiling masses of “maggots” we find feasting on rotting carcasses and garbage.