Those first couple of buzzes confirming the entrance of a new fly to the room can be surprisingly annoying – especially when you’ve just settled down to watch TV. And this is definitely happening to me more this summer.
I’m not the only one. Flies are absolutely everywhere right now: around the house, in the street, and apparently everywhere else too. While I was watching the comedian Daliso Chaponda live last week, he had to briefly stop the show to see off a fly that had been whirling around his head for 10 minutes.
“Personally, I’ve noticed a lot of flies,” Seirian Sumner, Professor of Behavioural Ecology at University College London, tells me. “Any reports on how insects are doing are purely anecdotal at the moment because we’re only halfway through the summer. But anecdotes are valuable – people notice insects.”
Her PhD student, Femi Benny, an expert in flies and wasps, says there is “no doubt about the increase in the fly population this year”. She points out that the record May heatwave and repeated heatwaves since have created ideal breeding conditions — a fly develops from an egg to an adult in about a week when it’s hot, compared to a fortnight or more when it’s cooler.
This means that each generation breeds again sooner and numbers explode. Meanwhile, the hot weather means food rots faster, creating a stronger smell that attracts yet more flies. Anecdotal evidence from the experts suggest there’s been an increase in house, bluebottles, fruit, cluster and drain flies, among others.
