Critters are just common to cause damage to your home veggies garden. However, critters can sometimes be beneficial as pests.
What about hoverflies? Hoverflies can be a prominent species that people often misunderstand and sometimes even scare.
Let’s have a closer look at these flying animals and find out how to get rid of hoverflies if they are too frightening your home garden.
Get to know everything about them such as the animal specialties, how they bring benefit and cause uncomfortable feeling as well as how to keep them away from your house and garden.
Hoverflies Infestation
Before going further about how to keep away from the hoverflies, it is necessary to know the hoverflies in general including what actually they are, what kind of place they like to visit and how long they usually live.
What and How Are Hoverflies?
Just because they have such appearance doesn’t mean that hoverflies are not advantageous. Instead, these critters are highly advantageous though they get a bad reputation.
Now concerning these species will lead us identify not only about the animals but about how to get rid of them when they infest the home garden too much.
Hoverflies are classified into a member of fly developed a defense mechanism, leading them to get in trouble with human. They just look like the wasps in size and shape but copy the mannerism to scare the predator away.
Where Do the Hoverflies Usually Like to Visit?
Hoverflies usually fly around the place where their sweet food is available.
They can fly wandering in the home of around your garden where they smell something rotting.
In most cases, hoverflies also loves the flowers with a good scent. The flowers with nectar are the favorite place for them to come.
How Long Do Hoverflies Live?
How long do hoverflies live? The adult ones can live about 10 to 12 days in the summer.
However, some other species can even live longer in the cooler months and shorter in the warm period. For example, Hammerschmidtia Ferruginea hoverflies is able to live up to 55 to 60 days if they eat enough food and drink enough water.
What Attracts Hoverflies
Primarily, hoverflies are much attracted to sweet smells due to the fact that pollen and nectar are the primary sweet foods they eat. Just like all flies, they can also love to rotting fruits as well as garbage.
Sometimes, hoverflies are also called as corn flies as they often infest in corn flies where the larva is usually feats on aphids.
How to Get Rid of Hoverflies
To make the ecosystem in balance, people strongly recommend the use of naturally-applied methods.
In the other words, it is considered that the natural ways are safer and effective to repel the hoverflies.
Depending on where the hoverflies come to attack, here are the possible and natural technique you may want to apply as soon as they fly and stay.
On a Patio
It can be very uncomfortable to look at the hoverflies drooping by every time you are enjoying an evening tea or coffee.
Thanks to the electric fans that prove to efficiently scare them away. In this case, corded fans will work best.
However, if you have only a decent battery-operated fan, getting rid of such flies is also possible.
So you can simply turn on your fan and the airflow will make the hoverflies feel frustrated. Soon they will go away.
So whenever the hoverflies are showing up, just turn on the fan again. When they are gone, turn off the fan.
Other effective means of repelling hoverflies is citronella candle.
The cozy-smelling citronella candles are much of advantage in repelling not only the hoverflies but also the other pests.
So you can light these candles whenever they come and fly over certain area in your house or garden.
In the House
Unluckily, it is very uncomfortable to see a huge number of hoverflies wandering in the home. Everybody must feel annoyed with the hovering flies in the kitchen while she is cooking, right?
Moreover, it is also difficult enough to shoo them out a door or window. In this case, taking a lethal method is necessary.
The good news here is the fact that you can free up your home from hoverflies the same way as house flies and fruit flies. This way, you can use some effective remedies such as sugar traps, fly strips and carnivorous plants.
So simply take a product of your DIT trap that will be seemingly working best for the hoverflies at your house.
Place the trap where the hoverflies are gathering. Let them be trapped then.
Usually, kitchen is part of the house where the flies are flying around the dustbin and garden where there are some flowers with the attractive scents.
How To Repel Hoverflies
Dealing with the best way on how to get rid of hoverflies, we also come to offer you the tips on how to repel hoverflies.
In the garden house, hoverflies like bees are categorized as the important pollinators. It has been suggested that the hoverflies will just lay eggs on the aphids’ back. However, this is still unclear.
Considering that hoverflies population is a kind of stressful nuisance in the garden repelling them is a must then.
In this case, there are some recommended repellents which are all homemade. These repellents will help keep the hoverflies away from the garden even without hurting them at all.
Some simple recipes that are effective to get rid of hoverflies and other pests include citronella or lemongrass, citrus peel, half a lemon with cloves sprinkled all over it and spray made with soap, water and vinegar.
There is also a mix of extreme repellent consisting of dish soap, mineral oil and apple cider vinegar along with oils from peppermint, basil and rosemary.
This mix will work best but can be overpowering to humans as well. Therefore, it should be reserved in an area you want to come to.
How To Attract Hoverflies Elsewhere
Believe it or not, the things that highly attract the hoverflies your garden can be effectively used to keep them away when mixed with the repellents.
This way, there are some flowers with the high pollen count you can plant. These flowers are noticeably able to attract bees and butterflies along the property border away from your garden.
Later, the hoverflies will find their new source of food and make their home. Your garden is free from any hoverflies.
How To Get Rid of Hoverflies that Fly in Circles
It is often too much frustrating when there are a huge number of hoverflies flying in circles either in the hose or in theay from home or garden.
Here are the other techniques you can try to get rid hoverflies that fly in circles. garden. As we have mentioned, using some homemade repellents is considered effective to keep the hoverflies aw
Use Essential Oil
Using essential oil is one of the tips on how to get rid of hoverflies naturally.
Eucalyptus oil or lavender oil is considered effective to repel the hoverflies. This way, pick a few drops of essential oil on a paper and place it in a location where you don’t want the hoverflies to come.
Essential oil will work best to repel the hoverflies due to its string scent. In this case, the strong smell of essential oil will just disturb the flies and makes them frustrated. Finally, they will fly away from the area.
If you don’t have eucalyptus or lavender oil, peppermint is also good to use.
Use Apple Cider Vinegar Hoverfly Repellent
Use specifically apple cider vinegar to repel the hoverfly.
This is a special essential which is popularly used as a famous ingredient in fly repellant product. This apple cider vinegar works well to keep away the hoverflies and other flying insects, too.
Apple Cider Vinegar is less expensive. It is also easy and natural to use as flies repellent.
In using this essential oil, mix it with water and one tablespoon of dish soap. Then, fill the mixture in the spray bottle. As simple as that, it can be used readily to repel the hoverflies by spraying it over the flying flies.
This hoverflies repellent mixture comes with the strong scent and pack a punch. Accordingly, this mixture is recommended to use outdoors only.
Use A Fly Zapper
A fly zapper is one of the recommended means of repelling hoverflies. It works by eliminating the number of hoverflies that fly in circles either in your house or in the garden.
A fly zapper is available to purchase. It comes with the different sizes to suit the place you locate it.
The zapper lights will surely attract not only the hoverflies but also other insects toward it.
Old stories say that fly zapper is an easy and effective way to decrease the number of all flies types inside and outside your house.
Keep Your Garden Dry
As we know, a pool of staying water is the best place for flies and insects to breed in millions number including hoverflies and mosquitoes.
Thus, keeping your garden away is considered the good way of stopping them to breed.
Spray Insecticide
If you have tried a number of natural techniques yet the hoverflies population is still unavoidable, spray insecticide. In this case, powder and spray are the traditional insecticides to help you struggle for repelling hoverflies.
These are effective but they carries an impact since they contain toxic ingredients that could harm the children and pets.
Therefore, it is much recommended that you get the less toxic insecticides in order that you can keep the hoverflies away without too much harming the environments.
Spray them in places where they are usually at.
The last but not least tip is to contact a professional exterminator. If hoverflies are coming and coming without decreasing their number, you need to consult with the exterminator how to solve the problem.
Plant Nectar-Filled Plants Strategically
Truly, hoverflies offers much benefit to your garden. They eat insects that may cause damage to your garden. Thus, planting nectar-filled flowers will attract the hoverflies.
In the home garden, these flies will be busy feeding themselves. As a result, they will never annoy you or fly over your garden.
Therefore, make sure you plant the nectar-filled plants which are in distance with the garden or patio. Add plants such as mint, basil, lavender and bay leaf to effectively repel the flies.
Do Hoverflies Bite or Sting?
Many people assume that hoverflies sting because they look like a wasp or yellow jacket. It is totally wrong.
Hoverflies are completely less dangerous since they don’t have stinger. They will be interested only in plants in the garden and eat the plant insects like caterpillars and aphids.
Hoverflies is considered as a beneficial insect since they help pollinate the flowers. They love the flowers’ nectar. As a result, many flowers are pollinated.
Hoverflies Nest
Dealing with the ways on how to get rid of hoverflies, we should also know the hoverflies nest in order that we can anticipate their upcoming.
Specifically, hoverflies live in nest that is made from chewed wood.
The nest is recognized to have a distinctive paper-y look. These kind of flies love to build their nest in places such as porch ceilings, roof eaves, behind shutters ad etc.
The nest size can be pretty large like the basketball size. In this case, the nest can contain thousands of hoverflies. Noticeably, hoverflies also love to take shelter in compost heap or some old trees.
Final Words
Now that you know lots about hoverflies, their lives and how they get so attracted to come to your garden, make sure you choose the most suitable tips on how to get rid of hoverflies.
Do the trial and see the results. If they do not help much, you may try another tip since we have shared you more to help you struggle for solving the overpopulated hoverflies flying on your areas.
