Question
First off; thank you for taking the time to read and consider my question(s). I hope you don抰 mind if I write my description first and end with my questions. I live in north Alabama and the nightly lows avg. 28~42 degrees so, many things are seeking shelter. Hoping I do not sound arrogant, but I know my poisonous spiders for this area as far as what to avoid and what I want to keep around. My house is about 115 yrs. old and my shop is build of the same wood so it抯 probably been there almost as long, and my shop has a definite spider problem. I've had them in my hair, crawling up my legs, hands and arms. I know to blow or shake them off instead of smacking them, but I always capture them in case I got bit and didn't realize it. Doing that has given me a lot of time watching them and paying attention to how they look and act. Man! They are aggressive. My problem that stems my question is, they've become Soo abundant. We had a yard sale at the first of the summer and stored the remainder in the center room of the shop until recently. I found a couple of brown recluse (I will just use spiders since all I抦 talking about are those) in the first clothes I brought out so I checked the clothes as best I could. It was all I knew to do. Tonight, I moved the first shirt in the back corner of the shop and the webs breaking sounded like velcro coming apart. 5 spiders ran for cover, several on the shoulder part of the rack and several on the sleeves. I抦 not sure if it jumped or what, but I had to swat a huge one off the front of my shirt. There were shed skins all over the rack and about a month ago. As of right now, I plan on burning the entire rack of clothes tomorrow afternoon. I counted 139 various sized skeletons in a 1抶3?area behind the door. They抮e usually stuck to a wall or something out of the way and all eight legs are outstretched and rigid. I抳e killed well over 130 since late spring; one night as the temperature dropped, I killed 29 in less than 40 minutes as they came in for shelter. I also store wood in the front part of the shop so I expect to see a few there, but not 1 or 2 for every piece of wood in the stack. I抦 thankful I haven抰 seen any in the house yet. I try to keep any debris away from the house and keep around the foundation as clean as possible.
Will washing clothes with regular soap kill the spiders or their eggs?
Is there anything I can do to keep them out of my house or crawl space (I抦 very limited on what I can spend for treatment which is why I haven抰 professionally sprayed)
I know you can抰 get rid of them completely but is there a way to get them out of the shop I have to inhabit? I抎 never personally seen one before here and now wish I抎 never at all. I抦 seriously almost at the point to filling my 5gal. gas can and burning that shop and all it抯 little critters with it. Tonight was just the last straw that almost sent me to the hospital.
Is there anything that will kill them, like fumes from some chemical (or mix), smoke, an arc welder, really bright light, high voltage current? (no worries, I抦 not dumb enough to mix hazardous chem. I worked NBC in the Marines)
There抯 just not that much information on them and they抳e never really bothered me; not even with one on me. But tonight in that small area and so many moving at once was too much.
Last question: I found another spider; almost like a black widow having the same shape with the hourglass and shiny abdomen, but there were more spots across the top of the abdomen toward the head and the body was a yellowish-brown, almost like its black had faded. Is this just some kind of redneck widow I抳e stumbled upon?
I hope I didn抰 write too much for my questions, if so I do apologize. My disability runs away with me sometimes.
Thank you again so much for your time,
Steven
Semper Fi!


Answer
Steven,

The best way to reduce the number of brown recluse spiders is to use sticky traps. Because these spiders move around from place to place sticky traps work well. Here's an article about making sticky traps http://www.livingwithbugs.com/spider_tp.html from cardboard and a sticky material called Tangle Trap. Traps are also available commercially (see link on that page). Insecticides do not work very well for spiders.

Also, take a look at this article about brown recluse spiders http://www.livingwithbugs.com/brown_recluse_spiders.html for general life history information.

The widow spiders can be highly variable in terms of color patterns. The only way to be completely sure is to get it identified by a spider expert. Contact your county Cooperative Extension office and they will be able to send the specimen to the university. Tell me what county you live in and I can help you locate the Extension office nearest you. Post a follow up.

Jack DeAngelis
http://www.livingwithbugs.com