What are those itty bitty black flying bugs in my apartment???

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mightymouse

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HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My tiny (300 sq ft) basement apartment is infested with itty bitty black flying bugs! They are very small; the largest of them is about 1/10 to 1/15 the size of a normal house fly, the smallest is only slighlty bigger than a gnat. They hover around any light source (my 115 watt reading lamp when I'm reading, my computer screen when I'm online), and of course they fly past my nose, or zip around my head whenever possible. While I'm away, they congregate on the glass panes of my front door, drawing heat, no doubt, from the glass as the sun warms it. When I come home, the routinue never varies. After I shut the front door, I raise the mini blind and kill as many of them as I can. Then I turn on a reading light and swat more of them as they are drawn to the light. After the initial homecoming bloodbath, I then have to get up periodically throughout the evening to swat the stray 5, 10, or 15 or more of them that hover around me and my reading lamp. I kill 40-50 of these things EVERY SINGLE NIGHT!!!!!!! This has been going on for 2 or 3 weeeks, and I am afraid if I don't spend the first 10-15 minutes of EVERY SINGLE WORKDAY NIGHT killing 30-40 of these little pests they'll be so thick in here I couldn't see across the room, and that's not even counting the ones I'll kill during the course of the evening. Even as I type this, I've plucked 5 or 6 of them out of the air between me and the computer screen!!!!!!!!!!
I know that the mild winter weather we've had has something to do with this infestation (it simply hasn't been cold enough long enough to kill the bugs). But I am getting tired of swatting these damn things every single night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Does ANYONE know what these things are; or, more importantly, how they can be eradicated? Again, this is a tiny studio apartment, so poision would likely linger too long (I have sealed the one window in the place with plastic to keep the drafts out, so my apartment is relatively air tight), and I'd rather not poison myself. Any such remedy would have to be either rather mild, or very short-lived (or very fast-acting without lingering). But did I mention that this happens EVERY SINGLE NIGHT?????????? I AM ABOUT AT MY WIT'S END--CAN ANYONE HELP??????????????
 

oufan24

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A friend of mine had those once in his apartment. The cause ended up being a sack of rotten potatoes. Got any rotten food around?
 

mightymouse

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A friend of mine had those once in his apartment. The cause ended up being a sack of rotten potatoes. Got any rotten food around?
There is very little food in my apartment at any time. Cereal for breakfast, almost all other meals eaten out (I'm a rather hopeless--or is that helpless--cook). The trash probably could stand to be taken out, though....BTW, these things are bigger than the little bugs that fly around bananas and such. The little ones I described in my original posts are no doubt newly-hatched, the bigger ones are certainly bigger than what I've heard called "friut flies." Whatever they are, they reproduce quickly. Perhaps they are "May Flies"? I don't really know what those things look like, either.
 

mightymouse

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sounds like they might be sewer gnats. have you or anyone else in your building had some drain problems?

try some bleach in all of the drains.

That could be it! I share the basement with a neighbor who recently did have sewer/drain problems in his apartment (this house was built between 1914 and 1916, so there is almost always something wrong with the drains/sewer). I'll try the bleach idea--thank you, so much!! Anyone else have a guess? (And "no" on the spit cup.) If it helps, whatever they are, the ones I don't kill with the fly swatter happily incinerate themselves in my reading lamp. They die there by the dozens. I'll try to post a pic of the "bodies".
 

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