If you live in Bingham, Whatton, Lowdham, Burton Joyce or Calverton, keep an eye on your loft space and south- or west-facing walls over the next few weeks. Early September is when Nottinghamshire’s rural and semi-rural villages start seeing an annual visitor that catches most homeowners off guard: the cluster fly.
What is a cluster fly, and why is it heading for your house?
Cluster flies (Pollenia species) are slightly larger and slower-moving than the common housefly, with a sluggish, almost drunken way of flying and a faint golden sheen to the hairs on their thorax. Unlike houseflies, they aren’t attracted to food or rubbish. Their life cycle depends on earthworms in soil, which makes them a particular problem for villages surrounded by farmland, paddocks, allotments and mature gardens — exactly the setting around Bingham, Whatton, Lowdham, Burton Joyce and Calverton.
As temperatures drop through September and October, adult cluster flies look for a sheltered, dry place to spend the winter. That’s when they head for buildings, and older stone or brick properties with exposed roof voids, gaps around soffits, or original sash windows are especially inviting. Once a batch of flies finds a good overwintering spot, they release a pheromone that draws in more flies year after year — which is why the same houses in the same villages tend to get hit hardest, autumn after autumn.
Why Bingham, Whatton, Lowdham, Burton Joyce and Calverton see it worst
These villages share the conditions cluster flies favour: open farmland and grazing land nearby (particularly around Whatton and the fields between Bingham and the Vale of Belvoir), riverside meadows along the Trent at Burton Joyce, and older property stock in Lowdham and Calverton with the kind of gappy Victorian and Edwardian roof detailing that’s easy for flies to squeeze into. Calverton in particular, with its mix of older ex-mining terraces and surrounding countryside, is a spot we get repeat call-outs from every year once the flies start clustering.
You’ll usually notice it first on a warm afternoon in early autumn: dozens or even hundreds of flies gathering on an outside wall in the sun, then, on cooler days, appearing indoors around loft hatches, upstairs windows and light fittings as they find their way into the roof space.
Why DIY sprays don’t solve it
Supermarket fly spray dealing with the flies you can see indoors treats a symptom, not the cause. The real population is usually sitting in the loft void, wall cavities, or behind soffit boards, and a can of aerosol won’t reach them there. Worse, killing the flies you see indoors does nothing to stop the next wave coming in from outside, and sprayed carcasses left in a loft space can themselves attract carpet beetles later in the year.
The effective approach is a residual insecticide treatment applied to the entry points and roosting areas — eaves, soffit gaps, roof void timbers and window reveals — ideally before the main clustering swarm arrives, or as soon as the first flies are spotted. This breaks the cycle rather than just cleaning up after it, and because the same pheromone-marked spots get reused every year, one thorough treatment now can noticeably reduce the problem in following autumns too.
What to do if you’re seeing them now
If you’re already noticing flies gathering on external walls or turning up in an upstairs room, it’s worth getting a treatment booked in promptly rather than waiting for the full swarm, since numbers typically build through September and peak once the first properly cold nights arrive. It’s also worth checking loft insulation and any accessible roof void for existing clusters, so we can treat the right spot rather than just the windows they’re using to get in.
NestBusters covers Bingham, Whatton, Lowdham, Burton Joyce, Calverton and the surrounding villages, and cluster fly treatments are one of the most requested jobs across these areas every autumn. A visit typically involves treating the known entry points and roof void with a professional residual product, which keeps working long after a can of spray would have worn off.
Get in touch on 0742 984 9483 or via nottinghampest.co.uk to book a cluster fly treatment before this year’s swarm settles in.
