Spider-Proofing Your Home

This time on PEST PROSpectives: Associate Certified Entomologist Amber Byars breaks down the spiders people actually see around Michigan homes and why they show up in basements, porch light fixtures, and around overgrown landscaping. 

Amber also explains what spider control looks like in the real world, from dewebbing and habitat fixes to perimeter treatments and winter prevention.

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Pest Pros of Michigan

PEST PROSpectives is a Livemic Communications production.

Transcript

Richard Piet 0:08

I'm Richard Piet. Welcome back to Pest Prospectives from the Pest Pros of Michigan. That's exactly what they are: the pros about pests. Amber Byars is back with us, associate certified entomologist, and also oversees field operations at Pest Pros of Michigan. Hello, Amber.

Amber Byars 0:26

Hey, Richard.

Common Michigan Spiders Identified

Richard Piet 0:27

Today we're talking about, I'm thinking of that little song my mother used to sing to me when I was a kid. Up the spider. It's a bitsy spider. Yeah. That's it. Nice. Today we're talking about spiders and trying to understand them a bit. And they're, you know, they're a little creepy for some people. I'm going to try to figure that out. What spiders do we have in Michigan, by the way? What are the most popular ones that you see?

Amber Byars 0:56

I would say wolf spiders are really popular. People find them a lot in their homes, around their homes. Um, and they can get pretty big. Then the fishing spider, the grass spider, they're really similar in appearance. And those are large. They can get like they pretty big when they're extended out. I find them a lot in basements, outside in the grass. Okay. And then um we do have the brown recluse in Michigan, not super popular. Like I don't see, I don't see them a lot. And then cellar spiders. Cellar spiders I see in almost any basement that I go into.

Richard Piet 1:32

So wolf cellar grass are the most common. Are they I think of daddy long leg spiders, what we used to call that with with the long legs. Is that that does that fit the description here?

Amber Byars 1:45

I would put that in the category of the cellar spider. They look very similar to what when I was growing up, uh daddy long leg was. Yeah.

Richard Piet 1:52

Yeah. Yeah. We don't have any tarantulas or anything, do we?

Amber Byars 1:55

No, not unless you bring them in and port them, keep them as pets.

Richard Piet 2:00

Which people do. Yeah, not you. All right. But the brown recluse, that's a poisonous, venomous bug, isn't it?

Amber Byars 2:08

Yeah, yes, it is. They have this really cool characteristic. It's of like a fiddle shape on them, on their cephalothorax. And it's like almost like the the key identity, and who wants to get close enough to that to see it? Um, probably only only us in the industry, but yes, they are they are venomous for sure.

Richard Piet 2:27

Okay. But you say you've not seen one and y'all have your experience.

Amber Byars 2:31

I've been called out to a few calls for concerns of brown recluses, um, but I have never encountered one um in one any of our clients. So they're not they're not very relevant, but they are around. It is good to know that they're that they're here in Michigan.

What Attracts Spiders To Homes

Richard Piet 2:47

All right. Well, I would say someone such as yourself who is called upon and spends her career working on these things. If you haven't seen one, then I would say, as you put it pointed out, it may not be all that relevant. So let's talk about the ones we do see the wolf, the cellar, the grass spiders. Uh, what's interesting is what they're attracted to and why they might be there. What is it?

Amber Byars 3:13

Yeah, so I mean, all spiders are predators of other insects. So a big part of control with spiders is to maintain um the insect population on the property. They're also around because there's a lot of harborage areas or vegetation, overgrown vegetation, nice dark, damp areas if we're talking about um inside. Basements are very, very popular. But yeah, definitely controlling other insects will will help with a spider population.

Richard Piet 3:44

What are they like most? Other insects, I mean.

Amber Byars 3:48

They have a pretty diverse food source. They'll they'll eat anything, any, any other insect.

Richard Piet 3:55

Really?

Amber Byars 3:56

There's actually a spider that it's called a woodlouse spider. I see them a lot inside factories and stuff. Um, factories and and like commercial properties that have a lot of like they're in the woods or a lot of open bay doors, but they come, they eat woodlouse. They they that's the only thing they eat.

Richard Piet 4:14

Oh, not so diverse.

Amber Byars 4:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But when we're talking about what they're attracted to, uh they really like to be in darker areas. We have this feedback for our clients that have the exterior lighting, like on their patios or out, you know, like in the backyard, they have these nice setups. They have like the bright white lights that make everything really lit up. Um, they would spiders wouldn't be around too much if there was a warmer light. And that's true for a lot of occasional invaders.

Richard Piet 4:46

That's interesting. So that could be why. So I like to have my porch light on at night. And it's the bulb is, you know, up inside of a shroud. And generally speaking, there's usually a spider of some sort in there. They like that space.

Amber Byars 5:05

Yeah, yeah. And so there's certain light bulbs, warmer bulbs, like warmer colored bulbs, like the older, like yellow lights versus the new bright LED lights that are very attractive to insects, even like flying insects. You see them all swarming around the lights. Yeah.

Richard Piet 5:23

Yeah. What do they like about that bright white?

Amber Byars 5:27

Uh you know, I'm not I'm not too sure. I just know that that is something very attractive to them, insects in general. Uh, just like a moth to a flame, you know?

Richard Piet 5:37

Yeah, it's a shiny object. They like it. Got it. All right. So there's some other pest that they're interested in. I don't suppose they want to eat the odorous house ants, do they? We just talked about them in the lab. Yeah, right. Wouldn't that be nice if they could help us out with uh such things?

Amber Byars 5:56

Yes, ants for sure, flies, beetles.

When People Want To Keep Spiders

Richard Piet 5:59

Yeah, we could certainly use that, but that doesn't, they're probably not that organized, are they? They're just going to uh uh bop around until they find a nice meal.

Amber Byars 6:10

We we definitely mention that though to our clients, certain insects that are predators sell their things, um, carpenter ants and termites, um, spiders and other insects. A lot of our clients actually ask us is there something that you can use that will kill everything but my spiders? Because they really they find them so very beneficial because they're like nature's pest control. But um, unfortunately, we we cannot.

Richard Piet 6:37

So people will actually ask you not to kill the spiders?

Amber Byars 6:41

Yeah, sometimes I've gotten that quite a few times. Yeah.

Richard Piet 6:44

That's interesting. And so they feel that there's some sort of eco balance with them around.

Amber Byars 6:49

Benefit, yeah, absolutely.

Richard Piet 6:51

Wow. So how do you handle that? I've got spiders, but I want them, I want them to stay, but take care of everything else. You really got to do your homework on that.

Amber Byars 7:01

Yeah, we're just honest, you know, we just let them know um if we're gonna use the pesticide on the property, anything that comes into contact with it as far as insects go will it will have an effect on them. There are other ways that we can treat without using uh a standard insecticide that's more of like an eco-friendly product. Just if they don't want, you know, to hurt the spiders, we can look into some things. But really, the truth is that if we're going to be applying a product, it's gonna be effective towards spiders as well. Spiders are though, they're one of the harder insects to control or are um because they're they're just they have so much more body mass than a lot of other insects that we target. So it takes a lot more volume, a lot more um active ingredient to kill a spider.

Richard Piet 7:54

For a minute there, I could resemble what you were describing. Yeah. A lot of body mass. Oh, geez. Okay. So uh it it's interesting though. If you could wave a magic wand and get rid of the other bugs but keep the spiders, they probably wouldn't stay because they're feeding on those, right?

Amber Byars 8:10

Yeah, yes, exactly. They wouldn't have much of a food source left. Um, so very, very good point, yeah.

Richard Piet 8:16

Yeah, they wouldn't uh you can really wish for them to be around, but if you can't make it attractive for them, they won't be there.

Why Spiders Are Hard To Kill

Amber Byars 8:24

Yeah, it is interesting how how many clients would prefer to keep certain pests, and that has actually been a reason why you know we don't move forward with general services because they would like they would prefer not to hurt certain insects.

Richard Piet 8:39

And so when you're uh dealing with the spider treatment plan, same kind of approach, you're gonna use IPM, you're gonna uh look around, uh look at the perimeter, look at the interior. Is that all true?

Amber Byars 8:52

Yeah, we have a um like a three-step process with especially for spider control, one that starts with dewebbing the structure, getting all the webs off the home, pulling again with the vegetation, making sure that the vegetation is separated from the structure as well. Um, we can spray a a repellent product onto our weber head, which works really, really well when you're cleaning off of a house. It sticks to the structure and it it's like um has a lot of it's lemongrass, uh peppermint oil. It's like essential oil based. If it contacts them directly, they could die, but it's really like the scent that we're leaving behind that prevents them from wanting to come and renest in that area.

Richard Piet 9:37

Kind of like us with stink bugs and odorous house ants. We we have an adverse reaction to those too.

A Practical Spider Control Plan

Amber Byars 9:43

Yes, yes, to that smell. Absolutely. Yeah, so we would do web everything, talk about trimming back vegetation, looking at if there was another pest issue on the property, and then doing a perimeter band uh with a repellent. Now, different from the ants, uh repellent products work really well for spiders because they're more um they don't groom themselves, they're they don't really aggregate together, they don't have colonies, they're like the solo arachnid. I keep calling them insects, but they're arachnid. And so a repellent product works really well because if one of them if it dies upon the first interaction, great, we don't really need them to transfer that around anywhere. It won't really, that's not how that was designed.

Richard Piet 10:31

They're loners. Yeah. Okay.

Amber Byars 10:34

There might be multiple in a s in a in a certain area, right? If you've ever seen those bushes out and they're just like, they just have webs and all of these little funnel webs all over them, like they'll be attracted to the same environment, but they're not going to be interacting with each other in the same way.

Richard Piet 10:51

Yeah, not considered a colony.

Amber Byars 10:54

Yeah.

Richard Piet 10:54

So if we go around our property and knock all the webs down, does that help you or does that help the issue?

Amber Byars 11:03

It definitely helps as far as a client's perspective on effectiveness of treatment, is back to the challenge with spiders, is um they they do need a lot of active ingredient and a lot of volume. So in between services, if webs pop up, the first thing that we would tell a client, especially if it's an egregious amount or more than, you know, one here or one there, please call us back because we want to we want to try to pivot in our service if that product wasn't working or if we needed to apply more um volume of the pesticide.

Richard Piet 11:38

So um Well, this is a uh terrific way to keep an eye out, right? If they're gonna build a web, then you're gonna see that and you're gonna know, okay, we still have work to do.

Web Removal And Service Adjustments

Amber Byars 11:49

Yeah. And lakefront properties, ooh, they have a hard time um keeping spiders down. We we rarely recommend doing uh our normal quarterly service on a lakefront, especially if it's surrounded by woods, like it is so hard to wait three months before another pesticide application because they're just they're so heavily populated in those areas.

Richard Piet 12:09

Well, you talk about some of the things they like dampness, darkness. Boy, a wooded property near a lake that maybe doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight, doesn't dry out fully.

Amber Byars 12:20

Yeah.

Richard Piet 12:21

That's like uh living in a mansion for them.

Amber Byars 12:23

Yeah, exactly. Very, very challenging.

Richard Piet 12:26

All right. So someone calls you, they say I have spiders. What's gonna happen?

Amber Byars 12:32

Yeah, so we'll come out and we'll take a look at what species we're dealing with to see if it's something that we can target certain areas versus others. Take a look inside, do some spot applications in the areas where they're seeing them, and then always recommend any of the conducive conditions be remediated for sure. Um, then set the expectation as far as the type of environment that we're in that we're dealing with, how effective the service would be at a certain interval. And then 100% of the time we're focusing on the outside areas, the the foundation level around window frames, um, around soffits, because spiders can come in up high as well. And so we're doing a complete barrier treatment, exterior perimeter application around the whole home.

Richard Piet 13:18

Okay. And does winter wipe them out, by the way?

Amber Byars 13:22

No, um, spiders can stay active indoors.

Richard Piet 13:26

Okay, as long as they get in from the outside.

Amber Byars 13:28

Yeah.

Winter Survival And Long-Lasting Dust

Richard Piet 13:29

And that they could be in your basement or uh even your attic, I suppose, hiding out.

Amber Byars 13:34

Yeah, they you know, they are technically an occasional invader because they don't really thrive inside, but they will um they will wander in or they'll be attracted to a food source, or um, there's just something in the environment that they're, you know, utilizing the structure for, but they're really they really thrive outdoors.

Richard Piet 13:55

Okay. And even over the winter, they can last, but there would have to be something they can feed on, I would imagine, right?

Amber Byars 14:02

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Richard Piet 14:04

Yeah. So they've got to have some other pests around even during winter to help survive until things warm up.

Amber Byars 14:12

Yeah, okay. We really try not to only stick to interior applications. Even in the winter, we would want to get an exterior dusting application done in cracks and crevices and voids where in the spring or summer where they're going to be passing through those areas that will get some control out into the future as well. Because that dust, once you apply it, it lasts for a really long time.

Wrap-Up And How To Get Help

Richard Piet 14:33

Okay. Well, that's a plus. Yeah. All right, there you go. Spiders in Michigan. There are a few that are the most common. Maybe you're seeing some in your own property. The Pest Pros of Michigan are ready to help. Thank you, Amber. Of course, thank you. Amber Byars, Pest Pros of Michigan, here on Pest Perspectives. We invite you to subscribe where you get podcasts or visit the Pest Pros website. The link is in the show notes. Lots of them there too. Take care.