An outdoor Nyama choma barbecue party in your backyard or a nice picnic at Arboretum or Ngong Hills is a great way to celebrate birthdays, graduations, and other special occasions.
Unfortunately, serving food outdoors tends to attract flies, and having to shoo them away while entertaining and eating outside can be a real pain. However, repelling these pests may not be as hard as you think.
Follow these tips and tricks to help keep your gathering free from flies.
Set up fans
Flies don’t fly very well in windy conditions. Just a subtle breeze can send those little buggers flying off course. Use that to your advantage. Portable electric fans could easily keep those pesky insects away. Consider also a hand held battery powered fan to keep flies away at your outdoor parties, plus they’ll keep you cooler when it’s hot.
Citrus Scents
Flies dislike citrus scents and you can use that to your advantage at your next outdoor party. Spare a few lemons after you’ve served your gin and tonics slice them in half and create some table decorations with them. Some herbs including basil, lemon grass, mint, cloves and rosemary have the same effect on flies. If you really want to double down on the scents stuff cloves and mint into the flesh of the sliced lemons and set it in the middle of your outdoor table or Maasai shuka.
Use Scent Diffusers or Candles
Mosquito coils or sticks can be very effective in keeping flies away from your food. They’re used to repel mosquitoes but they work well for us to repel flies. Citronella candles work too, though they’re obviously less effective outdoors if there’s a strong wind. If you choose a citrus fragrance, a reed diffuser can drive away flies too.
There’s nothing worse than flies hovering around your head while you’re trying to eat and landing on your food every time you’re not shooing them away. Hope this list will help keep flies from crashing your outdoor party.
