You’ve probably heard of Charlotte’s Web, a children’s book and movie that animated a spider’s story and made her lovable. But if you ask me, anything with more than 4 legs is automatically creepy. This post gives you 5 types of spiders in your home and shows you how to manage them. As a bonus, this post shares tips and tricks and explains how pest professionals treat for spiders.
Table of Contents:
- Spiders
- Types of spiders in your home
- Tips for managing spiders
- How pest professionals treat for spiders
- How we treat for spiders
- Next steps
- Conclusion
Spiders
We all know what spiders look like: creepy, 8-legged arthropods that produce webs for their homes. These creatures (also called arachnids) produce the silky web and create patterns in their webs, which serves as architecture and creativity. These webs house the spiders, protect their egg sacs, and act as a trap for their food.
Spiders differ from insects in 3 ways: they have 2 body segments where insects have 3; they have 8 legs where insects have 6; and they do not have wings where insects have wings.
Spiders’ heads have eyes and fangs where their venom canal rests. Their top section, called a cephalothorax, holds their organs and has joints where all 8 legs are attached. Their abdomen, called a opisthosoma, houses the silk their webs are made from as well as their anterior and posterior spinnerets.
Spiders have long legs and can therefore walk on the silky webs, something that other insects can’t do! A web can contain up to 50,000 spiders, though most spiders that disrupt Minnesota homes and businesses don’t grow that large. Most spiders don’t end up living for long, up to 2 years though. Tarantulas and other spiders some house and cage can live up to 25 years.
Their webs hold other purposes too, like catching their prey. Flying insects will often land on it or try to fly through it and the spiders will strike! Because web-building spiders have such poor eyesight, they often can tell when something has entered its web through vibrations.
To kill a prey that has landed in the spider’s web, it will spin more web around the insect, suffocating it until it has died. Spiders can only digest liquids, so they either drink its prey’s blood or pump some digestive enzymes onto the prey to sort of liquefy it, and then suck up its liquid nutrients.
Did you know scientists have been researching spider venom as a component for some medicines and non-polluting chemical pesticides? It’s cool that even threats prove to have useful solutions.
Types of Spiders in Your Home
Male spiders will often court female spiders to protect themselves from being eaten by the female spiders, which are also larger of the two. The female spiders sometimes eat the male spiders before or after fertilization of her eggs.
Males have what is called palpal bulbs that house their sperm and they transfer their sperm to female spiders with the help of their appendages called pedipalps. Though it may be different depending on the spider variety, most male spiders die after inserting his sperm into female spiders, at which point the female spiders will often eat them.
There are different types of spiders in your home: daddy long-legs, cellar, garden, wolf, brown recluse, and black widow, among many more.
Most house spiders are harmless because their venom is weak. At most, you may get a small welt like that of a mosquito bite and it may itch. Spiders are simply a nuisance, especially when or if you get multiple spider bites. But there are a few dangerous spiders out there to be aware of!
Did you know that spider egg cases can house hundreds of eggs, up to 3,000? That’s a lot of mouths to feed!
Daddy Long-Legs Spiders
Daddy long-legs and cellar spiders belong to the same family of spiders: the pholcidae. Daddy long-legs are delicate spiders, with very slender legs that can grow up to 2 inches long. This family of spiders is found on every continent in the world except Antarctica. Daddy long-legs are very commonly found in basements, garages, sheds, etc. anything dark, damp, cool, and with a cave-like resemblance. As a result of living in the dark, their webs are messy and disorderly, showing little to no pattern at all.
Contrary to popular belief, daddy long-legs don’t have the most potent venom and their fangs are simply too small to break human skin. These spiders and brown recluse spiders have the same type of uncate fang structure, meaning the fangs have hooks. MythBusters even tested and proved the theory that daddy long-legs have the most potent venom to be wrong: their venom is actually weak.
Daddy long-legs are of the most common types of spiders in your home.
Cellar Spiders
Cellar spiders typically have thicker legs than daddy long-legs, but they are still slender. Their body shape often resembles a peanut.
When threatened, cellar spiders can vibrate to scare a predator away. They do this while attached to their webs and it appears as though it is very windy, rocking the web and spider back and forth. It is only the spider oscillating within the bounds of its web. This vibrating method may seem cowardly, but it has proven a useful method to capture flying insects that escape their web or that simply bumped it.
Cellar spiders, like daddy long-legs are also among the most common types of spiders in your home.
Garden Spiders
The garden spider has easy to identify yellow markings on its back, and is a common outdoor spider found in gardens. They like sunny spots, but build their webs in more protected areas from the wind. Their webs are noticeably easy to recognize with its dense array of zig-zagging silk across the circular shape that can extend up to 2 feet in diameter.
Garden spiders typically eat other insects, but they have been known to eat small vertebrate organisms that get tangled in its web, like small geckos, frogs, or lizards.
If threatened, these spiders may bite but their venom is not harmful to non-allergenic people, similar to that of a bumblebee sting.
Though these spiders like the outdoors, they can get into sheds and garages, which ranks them among the common types of spiders in your home.
Wolf Spiders
Wolf spiders don’t spin webs and they live in solitude. Should they lay an egg case, they carry it on their backs, attached to their spinneret. They are hunters and have great eyesight, pouncing on prey as it comes near them. Wolf spiders like the dark and seclusion of basements, and are known to inhabit Minnesota.
Wolf spiders have 8 eyes arranged in 3 rows of 2 medium-sized, 2 large-sized, and 4 small-sized eyes. Their body size ranges from half of an inch to 1.5 inches long, legs not included. Their legs can be long and slender, easily taking up a 6- to 8-inch kitchen floor tile (yes, that knowledge is from experience).
If provoked wolf spiders will bite and release venom. Their bite causes swelling and mild pain, but is not serious.
Wolf spiders are not as commonly found in residential homes as daddy long-legs or cellar spiders. If you live in the woods or near wooded areas they may be more common. Because of these areas in which wolf spiders are found it puts them on the list of types of spiders in your home.
Brown Recluse Spiders
Brown recluse spiders size ranges between a quarter of an inch to three quarters of an inch, legs not included. Their colors range from light brown to dark brown, with some varieties being a little whiter or grayer. Brown recluses have 3 sets of eyes, which is not common among spiders.
The life cycle of brown recluses is different from other spiders. It takes 1 year for an egg to grow into an adult brown recluse, and then they live for another year or 2 after adulthood. An interesting fact about these spiders is that they can survive scarcity, like no food or water for up to 5 seasons (about 1.25 years). They are extremely resilient.
Brown recluses inhabit the US and even the norther, colder states. While they aren’t as common in Minnesota, they have been known to harbor and attack when threatened. Brown recluse spider bites can be painful, and their venom can affect humans in a number of ways. Due to the type of fangs this spider has, it’s venomous bite can become dermonecrotic loxoscelism, meaning the area of skin around the spider’s bite dies and becomes black. This is fairly rare as not all brown recluses bite with enough or strong enough venom to produce this reaction. Of those that do, however, another thing to be aware of is the possibility that the bites will cause systemic illness.
But, rest assured that not all brown recluses even bite. In 2001, over 2000 brown recluse spiders were removed from an infested home in Kansas. The 4 residents of that home were never bitten, though they had many encounters with the spiders, as you could imagine.
Just be aware of the threat these pests pose, especially to children and immunocompromised people, as the bites will affect them worse and be more life-threatening.
Even though brown recluses aren’t as common in Minnesota as in other parts of the US, they are present and therefore made the list of common types of spiders in your home.
Black Widow Spiders – Bonus Information!
While there are a few varieties of the black widow spider (western, southern, northern, and Galapagos), they are known most for their black exterior and signature red marking on their backs (this is the southern variety, not found in Minnesota). These spiders’ bodies end up about a quarter of an inch to a half of an inch long, legs not included. Their slender legs extend in an inward curve, mirroring the shape and size of their abdomen, so often they appear to have an hourglass shape.
Their reputation precedes them as dangerous creatures and although there are several thousand total black widow spider bites per year in the US, there are rarely any deaths. Fatality from a black widow spider bite is very, very rare.
Because these spiders aren’t in Minnesota, they probably won’t make it into your house, which made it a bonus in the list of types of spiders in your home.
Tips for Managing Spiders
- Keep a tidy house and if you see any webs, vacuum them up. Spiders will often build webs on the outsides of homes, garages, and businesses during the warmer months too. You can vacuum these up. Most pest professionals include knocking down webs in their service descriptions.
- Cut the clutter. Clutter inside or outside has been proven to be covering and hiding spots for spiders and other pests. If you eliminate hiding spots for them, they will want to stay less.
There are also natural approaches to discouraging spiders to build and reside in your homes or businesses. Among 10 tips recommended by Farmer’s Almanac, we would only recommend a few:
- White vinegar. The acidity and potency of smell and touch to sensitive insects have proven white vinegar to be an effective product against all types of spiders in your home.
- Citrus sprays. Citrus is another potent smell and has an acidic component as well. Citrus also smells more pleasant to humans and can dissolve other odors around the home too, like dead mice.
- Using fresh mint or peppermint oil has proven to be effective in repelling many insect and rodent pests.
How Pest Professionals Treat for Spiders
Inspection
Inspection is always key prior to treatment. A pest professional needs to understand the type of pest to eradicate. Inspection includes location and type of webbing in interior and exterior of buildings. The pest professional may inspect window frames, door frames, door sweeps, and the foundation to determine potential entry points for these pests. Spiders can squeeze in small openings, so exclusion may be needed if the exterminator deems it necessary to eliminate the types of spiders in your home.
Identification
Spider webs can be enough to determine the type of spider that has infiltrated your home or business. But if it’s not and there are no visible spiders, the pest professional may leave some glue boards or sticky traps to catch these pests.
Treatment
Treating for spiders can be difficult because their legs are so long that when they walk over a pesticide that may be designed to kill them it never reaches their bodies. Spiders don’t groom themselves, meaning the end of their legs that may have encountered a chemical product won’t touch their bodies naturally.
Likewise, most water-based sprays won’t stick to the silk material webs are made out of. Instead, pest management professionals may opt to treat the structure where the webs are attached, as the spider may travel back up there and then come into close contact with the chemical product.
Another way to eliminate spiders is to eliminate their food source: treat for the insects the spiders are eating, and spiders will leave to find another food source.
Of course if there are any visible spiders, pest professionals can treat the spiders directly using different products and applicators.
How We Treat for Spiders
Using the methods described above in “how pest professionals treat for spiders”, Done Right Pest Solutions technicians inspect, identify, and treat spiders well. By using appropriate products for either type of web-building spider or hunting spider, and knowing where to treat for each are two most important keys.
Web-building spider treatments are applied along where their web connects with the structure, or on the actual spider(s) itself. Hunting spider treatments can be a bit more difficult, but knowing where these hunting spiders harbor and travel goes a long way. Treating cracks and crevices, nooks and crannies, and even dark corners should do the trick as these spiders like to hide out as they hunt. If there is any distance between either of these locations, our technicians may treat the surface, as they will come into contact with the surface as they skim along it while hunting.
Web-building and hunting are the two types of spiders in your home and we know how to treat them!
Next Steps
If you live in a wooded area spider webs can seem to multiply on the exterior of your home overnight. If this happens to your home, we would suggest having regular exterior sprays as a part of reactive and preventative pest control for these nuisance pests. As a part of most pest control companies’ description of service comes with knock down of spider webs. Done Right Pest Solutions is no different.
With removal of spider webs complete, the technician applies a product to deter spiders from your home and kill those spiders that come into contact with the product. The product weathers the temperature and climate of the season and our service comes with a warranty. Rest assured that if more webs are built up due to inactive or worn-off product, our technicians come out for a zero-charge callback within the warranty.
We offer these seasonal exterior sprays spring, summer, and fall individually as well as collectively. Read more of the benefits of the collective treatment plan: the Peak Seasons Plan and “How to Know if the Peak Seasons Plan is for You.”
Conclusion
You’ve learned a lot about the 5 types of spiders in your home and how to manage them. You even learned about a bonus spider not found in Minnesota: the black widow. Please note that though it is uncommon, there is always a slight chance to come into contact with spiders from other countries through produce and other shipments. Next you learned some tips and tricks for managing, treating, and preventing the spiders. Finally, you learned how pest professionals treat spiders and how we treat spiders.
This has been an informative post about applicable exterior sprays for your home or business for seasonal maintenance. If you’re tired of continuously removing spider webs from the outside of your home or exasperated at how another cellar spider was in your laundry room, try these tips or give us a call to explore the Peak Seasons Plan for your home.
We’re here to help. 651-342-9489. For more information on services, visit our Services Page or fill out our Quick Estimate Form. We look forward to keeping you spider and web free!
What did you find interesting about these spiders? Have you tried our tips for preventing spiders? Let us know your thoughts and reactions below.
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