What is the best way to catch flies?

Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
Mantidforum

Help Support Mantidforum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
put raw or cooked meat in a deli cup or a bottle and make sure the lid has a large enough hole in it so flies can fly in and leave it in a sunny spot and move if rain or what not and in a day or 2 will have flies all over the place and they will lay eggs on the meat and you also will have maggots if left longer outside but this works well for me or you can use a bag and put dog feces in the bag and put that bag in the other bag for flies to fly into as well!

 
sueb4653 said:
seems like all the flies and moths at my house have gone into hiding
Click to expand...
Same here, at least for flies. It's like all the bottle flies and house flies went away. Weird.

I have resorted to butterflies and dragonflies but they're both a PITA to catch.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Get a jar, cut a couple pieces of banana and put them in the jar and leave it out. It will attract a lot of flies.

 
$2 will get you one these, very easy and quick way to get 5-6 or more at a time.

yhst-127861755510203_2213_94065844.jpg


 
eyes said:
Same here, at least for flies. It's like all the bottle flies and house flies went away. Weird.
Click to expand...
It's a fly conspiracy!!! :lol: It's happening to me too! For a while, there were a ton of flies around my house. And then when I got my mantis, they all disappeared! Do they know?! :eek:

 
I have both a net like above and a butterfly net I have a cup set outside with goodies in it and I think they see me coming I get within a couple of feet and woosh they are gone sneaky little critters.

 
Rich S said:
I can tell what works the best. If you get a small plastic cup of at least four ounces, but preferably 8 oz. and place at least two ounces of fresh dung in it. It matters not the species, but all mammalian dung works well including human. Then it will take only a few minutes and houseflies to the largest Blow flies are going to be in the cup. The next thing is to get them in your grasp. The way I do it is I use a medium sized (at least 12" x 12" preferably a bit larger than that) piece of mesh cloth that you can easily see through. I cover my face with the cloth as I approach the cup. Moving slowly and making sure there are at least three to four up to twenty flies can be caught at one time. You must cover the cup loosely and very quickly without being detected till it is too late. Give the flies a small tent over the top of the cup in which they can escape the cup, but be captive to your mesh tent. Then carefully fold up the bottom ends to there is o way of escape. You can take this mesh tent full of flies directly to you enclosure, or place in a 32 oz. deli cup in put in the freezer to stun the flies. This way you can easily distribute over a few enclosure or feed by hand as needed. You can experiment how long it takes your freezer to stun the flies. My freezer, which is fairly new and efficient does not take more than two minutes to stun most flies. I hope this helps you. I have caught over eighty nice big blow flies in a day when I needed to do so.

Rich
Click to expand...
Wow, tyvm for info
 
what one needs to do to find flies and other feeder bugs is if there is any woods to go into those areas and look around on leaves and may take a bit of looking or walking around but it will work and it has for me and it keeps working as I always find stuff for my mantids and never have problems finding flies or what I need being theres woods all around!

 
To follow up on my comments, for those few that are interested and live in the city and therefore have no woods to which to hunt for insects: After the lure material dries up in the sun and you have made a few to many visits to collect the flies that have been lured, you may check thoroughly and often you will find some wriggling larva or maggots as some call them. If you separate these from the medium in which they were, you can get yourself some nice wild pupae and therefore harvest some eclosing BBs or whatever you get in your yard. Actually in my yard there are an abundance of Green Bottles and a species of Sarcophagiidae (quite large) that has the grey striped coloration on the large part of their abdomen from the dorsal view. I place these in a small cup (the maggots) and let them swim to thir hearts; content in oatmeal, then after a few days when they are about ready to pupate place about 1/2" thick layer of corn meal over them. When they want to pupate, they will migrate to the dry cornmeal, cleaning themselves in the process and you can harvest them in another day or so. There are usually about 25 or so in my findings. For a small number of adults to feed, this is all sometimes one needs.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
This 'fly conspiracy' that you speak of could probably be related to the fact that most flies only have a week or two life span when adult...

 

Latest posts

Top