It's that time of year when we are chasing flies around the house in a futile attempt to either swat them or hasten their exit through a window or door. With warmer weather, flying insects find it much easier to get into our homes.
But this year people are being asked not to kill them, because their numbers are declining. A new study has revealed that the UK's flying insect population has dropped by 60% in the past 20 years, reports YorkshireLive.
With that in mind, people are being urged to show flies, wasps, bees and the like the door rather than the underside of a rolled-up newspaper. Charities Buglife and the Kent Wildlife Trust discovered the decline after asking people to count the number of insects splattered across the fronts of their cars.
According to the Natural History Museum, the data was compared to a similar study from 2004. In England, counts were down by a huge 65%, while in Scotland it was a 28% fall.
Paul Hadaway, the director of conservation at Kent Wildlife Trust, said: "The results from the Bugs Matter study should shock and concern us all. We are seeing declines in insects, which reflect the enormous threats and loss of wildlife more broadly across the country.
"These declines are happening at an alarming rate and without concerted action to address them we face a stark future. Insects and pollinators are fundamental to the health of our environment and rural economies.
"We need action for all our wildlife now by creating more and bigger areas of habitats, providing corridors through the landscape for wildlife and allowing nature space to recover."
People online have in the past shared their techniques for killing flying bugs at home including traps, electric rackets and sticky fly paper, or sicking their cats on them. But in the face of such startling figures, the best bet might be to shoo flies and wasps back outside rather than kill them.
The Natural History Museum goes on to paint quite the grim picture of how badly our world would be affected if we carry on seeing insect numbers dropping: "The decline in insects affects all the major groups. In the next few decades, as many as 40% of the world's species could become extinct, including bees, ants and butterflies.
"These insects represent some of the most significant pollinators of plants. While plants are pollinated in many different ways, insect-pollinated crop plants such as apples, pears, cucumbers, watermelons and almonds, will become significantly less productive without pollinators, and could fail altogether.
"The impact of insect loss goes far beyond our food supplies, however, as animals such as birds which depend on them for food will also be hit."
Rather than killing bugs, you could set up an insect house in your garden, and stick to real grass rather than astro turf. Other tips include mowing the lawn less regularly (as longer grass provides a home for more insects), and creating log piles for beetles to chow down on.
