How to get rid of midges in the apartment once and for all

We used to call everything small with wings mosquitoes, but behind this word there are many varieties of insects. Each of them has their own motives for moving into your apartment, their own tastes and their own weaknesses. Let’s figure out who they are – your uninvited neighbors – and how to get rid of them.

Reasons for the appearance of midges in the apartment

Of the abundance of insects in apartments, two or three species of midges most often settle. The most common fruit, or Drosophila. They usually start in spoiled fruits and vegetables – they are attracted by the smell of fermentation. They are harmless, but very annoying. These insects get into the apartment along with the harvested crops or products bought in the store. In warmth, they wake up, and then begin to actively multiply. By the way, this midge is not easy, but very valuable.

– Drosophila is a model object of geneticists, thanks to this fly, the structure of DNA has been discovered, and many scientific and medical discoveries are now being made, – notes entomologist Mikhail Krivosheev.

In addition to fruit flies, other insects are also found in houses.

– In apartments, you can often find sciarids (mushroom mosquitoes) that live in the soil in pots with indoor plants. These are small, less than 1 mm, black midges, their larvae develop in the ground. They do not cause harm to plants, only aesthetic hostility, – says Mikhail Krivosheev. – Worse than whiteflies, pests of plants – their larvae feed on the juice of indoor flowers.

Many midges are attracted to moisture. They love to live in basements and any place that is damp, rotten or moldy. Therefore, by the way, midges often appear where the garbage is not taken out in time.

– The same basement midges are able to fly into apartments and often they bother the residents of the first three floors, – clarifies Nadezhda Mirasova, employee of the SES-Service Dezservice.

Effective ways to get rid of midges in the apartment

Finding and eliminating the source

Efficiency: high

The most difficult thing here is to find the source of midges. If you’re dealing with fruit flies, go through your supply of fruits and vegetables. Take everything that is rotten and throw it away, and wash the rest and, ideally, put it in the refrigerator or on the balcony – where it is colder. Watch out for those fruits that show signs of falls or impacts, these spoil faster than others.

If you are overcome by midges that love moisture, the tactics are somewhat different.

– If the midges have chosen a flower, then most likely it is watered too often. Wet soil is infected, so the plant will have to be transplanted. If they started up because of rotting organic garbage, dispose of it, advises Nadezhda Mirasova.

In the case of mushroom mosquitoes, you can use top drainage: pour fine expanded clay, gravel or sand over the soil in a pot. Such drainage will dry quickly and insects will not be able to lay eggs, so you will soon be able to get rid of midges in the apartment.

Traps

Efficiency: average

You can get rid of midges, which love the smell of sweet and fermented, with a trick. There are many instructions on the net on how to assemble a fruit fly trap from improvised means. For example, you can pour any sweet liquid into a deep bowl, be it apple cider vinegar, beer or honey. From above, you need to stretch a transparent film over the bowl and make holes in it with a toothpick so that the flies can easily soak their wings, but they could no longer fly out into the wild. Let the trap stand for some time where the most midges fly. Later, check how many fruit flies fell for your trick and found their inglorious end in the bowl.

If you are too lazy to assemble the trap yourself, you can buy it in the store.

Duct tape

Efficiency: average

If there are a lot of insects and there is no time to wait until they all fall into the trap, use the old proven tool – sticky tape for flies. Place it near fruits or next to an affected plant so that as many flyers as possible are captured. For greater effectiveness, it is worth spraying the tape with something odorous so that it attracts midges.

Repellents

Efficiency: high

“To remove midges in an apartment once and for all, you can use purchased insecticides: products like Raptor, Dichlorvos or Reid,” advises Nadezhda Mirasova.

Spray them on shelves, shelving, and window sills where potted plants stand. Spray the area near the trash can and all the nooks and crannies of the apartment where the humidity is high. Make sure that there is no food, utensils, and pets in the treatment area – take cages with hamsters and birds away.

Use mosquito repellents. If you plug them into an outlet near those places that midges have chosen, this will scare them away.

You can also resort to the help of insecticides to cultivate the land in pots. In gardening stores, you can find chemicals in the form of granules, which, when added to the soil, will poison all unwanted guests. The most famous insecticides are Agravertin, Inta-vir, Fitoverm, Karbofos, with their help it is also possible to get rid of midges in the apartment.

Disinsection

Efficiency: high

Midges are often found in abundance where they are rarely cleaned. Such an atmosphere attracts not only midges, but also other insects, in which case it is more profitable to hit all the “residents” at once.

– It is more effective than store and folk remedies, of course, to call professionals who will carry out pest control, and at the same time poison cockroaches and bedbugs. The drugs that are currently being used are not dangerous for humans and animals and act exclusively on insects, Nadezhda Mirasova recalls.

Exterminators usually use a cold fog generator. With it, insecticides break down into tiny particles and cover all surfaces in the treatment area – this is a sure way to get midges out of the apartment once and for all. However, such processing is a troublesome business for the owners of the apartment: they will have to vacate the housing for a while, and then carry out a thorough cleaning.

Popular questions and answers