Hanging a Water Balloon Bag to Chase Flies, Is This Really

Many people often hang bags of water balloons out the door to chase and prevent hateful flies. Is this method of evacuating natural flies effective and does the fly really fear such water bags?

Key Facts About Chasing Flies with Water Balloons

The house fly we often encounter is the scientific name Musca Domestica. Not only are they uncomfortable, they also carry many dangerous pathogens like diarrhea, skin and eye infections. The pursuit of flies is very much concerned by many people, especially in food stores.

And a method that is used quite a lot is hanging bags of water balloons at the entrance. This method has many different points of view, many people think that it is necessary to put a piece of banknotes or leave a coin in the water bag.

The explanation of the phenomenon of flies that are afraid of water balloons also has many different opinions.

Some people believe that when looking at the water bag, the fly will see its magnified image in it and fly away. However, the most common reason that many people believe is that flies are afraid of light refraction. This is the phenomenon of light broken, changing direction when oblique transmission between two transparent environments.

In theory, light refraction can confuse insects, especially flies. Because flies have a special eye structure, each fly's eye is made up of 3,000-6,000 smaller eyes. These eyes allow flies to see every direction at the same time so light refraction affects their eyesight.

Why Chasing Flies with Water Balloons Matters

The sense of the direction of the fly is based on the direction of the rays of the light, in the daytime it is the sun's rays, the lights are in the evening. This explains why in the evening, insects often fly around around the light bulb, not because they like light as people think.

A plastic bag containing water in space will be like a converging lens that bends light. Therefore, flies will be confused and fly away.

But many people believe that the method of chasing flies with water-filled balloon bags doesn't really work. It only makes users feel secure.

Mike Stringham, a professor of entomology at North Carolina State University, experimented to test the effectiveness of this chemical-free fly removal method. After testing hanging bags of water balloons on two egg-laying chicken farms for 13 weeks, he found that the fly's activity in the area with a balloon bag was higher in areas that did not hang.

However, this study is not done under sunlight, so it only evaluates whether water bags reduce fly activity.

The effectiveness of hanging a water balloon bag outside the door has not been accurately determined. But anyway, there are still many people, restaurants that use this simple fly-chasing method.