Hello, and thank you for joining me. My name is Ben. So with Ben’s pest control, and it’s time for another one of the Ben’s pest control podcasts. And today I want to do an episode about spiders in your screen room or your lanai. If you live here in Florida or on the Treasure Coast, you are probably extremely familiar. I’m sorry, let me backtrack here. If you live here in Florida on the Treasure Coast, and you have a pool with a screen room, you are probably very familiar with the spiders that seem to gather near the top of the screen room and make some very unsightly webs. And in case you’re not aware, those spiders are in the family of the spiny orb web, Weaver spiders or spiny orb weaver spiders, they’re called. And now they there appear to be a couple of different species that we’ve noticed, the one that seems to be most common is kind of off white, maybe greenish. But it is definitely in the same family with one that people are extremely familiar with that they see a lot in the screen room. And they can be together. And it almost looks like what we would describe as a crab spider. And I know a lot of people in my 29 years who have actually referred to this spider crab spider. This spider, when you look at the top of it, it looks like a shell of a crab, let’s say a lot of times, it’s kind of an off white yellowish with black dots. And then it has six spines like Poke, poke Ian’s coming off of it, that sit on top of the spider itself. And they’re very, very common in flower beds. They’re very, very common in the screen rooms. There are fairly noticeable usually between two and five millimeters in size, I believe. And they make some massive webs. Now in the screen rooms, what you’ll see is they can make these large webs and they will build what we described as egg sacks. And normally the egg sacks look like five little balls all in a line in that web. And they’re almost always hanging from the metal part of the screen room. Well, the spiders that have laid those eggs are then they’re caring for the through the nest and, and taking care of their young and waiting for their young to be born. Now a lot of people find it very, they find it very scary. Those eggs, they’re above their heads, and they’re in the Lanai is where their kids play their pets play. And over time, if they’re not dealt with, it can become a very unsightly thing. But it can become weird, the whole screen room is just covered with them. So the first thing I would tell you is that these spiders are not poisonous. However, I always tell people, this is just my belief, you should never go out of your way to have contact with spiders. To me, spiders are a lot like for some people eating peanuts, you just don’t know how you’re going to react until you’re bitten. And I’ve seen some people that I’ve known over the years doing pest control, we’ve had some very nasty reactions to spider bites. Almost what I would describe as like flesh eating reaction where the flesh is just absolutely disgusting. So your best bet is to just not do anything that that could possibly get you in a situation where you are a bit by any spider. So now, a lot of people one of the lot of people that thing they ask is well what can we do about the spiders what should be done, and we ourselves are looking at a approach we have always kind of swept the spiders. But it can be very difficult if a screen room is extremely large. Sometimes it can be difficult to give a pool is extremely large to get over that. And the goal of sweeping is to take down their webs so that way they don’t have food. And in a lot of cases, we’re getting rid of those eggs and displacing them so they don’t hatch. However, we kind of are looking at things a little differently right now we are also trying to treat those spiders as much as we can. So that way hopefully those spiders get an application of chemicals so they don’t just get swept down and appear to come right back within a few days later. And for a lot of people that’s the biggest thing is they’re like, Well, you swept them down but it’s only been a week or two and they’re all back and they’re up there. So a few things that I can tell you is it may be possible that they are a sign that there’s a problem with your screen. Andrew, I’m not sure but if the screens are ripped, it would make it very easy for them to get in and thrive in those areas and set up nests. So it would be a sign that you should take a look at your screens and make sure that they’re all sealed properly. Another thing is, is that I always tell people, when it comes to spiders, you should look at your lights in your evening time, because lights draw food that spiders eat. So if you have lights that shine in the patio, at night, especially if you’re not using it, and those lights, draw mosquitoes or gnats, or no seams, then what’s going to happen is you’re going to inevitably end up with the spiders coming for that meal, the circle of life, the food chain, let’s say is all developed there. So all they need is that opportunity to have a nice free meal, and then come to your screen room and thrive in that environment. So it is also important along with spraying the spiders that you do sweep them down, however, because you want to try to make sure that those eggs do not hatch, and that hopefully they’re out of the house, if they’re going to hatch and not still in the screening room. And one of the things that has been traditionally common with spiders is when you sweep down their webs, you take away their ability to catch food. And that can have a major impact on whether or not that spider survives, or dies. There are some theories out there, that spider spent a lot of their energy a lot of their life building those webs and needing to have food so that way they can take care of their young. And so when the web is not there, that opportunity goes away. And all in all, what you really need to focus on especially if you’re looking at a thing like a screen room or alumni is that you got somebody who’s going to take it as seriously as possible for you. Somebody that’s going to address it, sweep it, hopefully spray it and go from there. And now keep in mind spraying it that’s that’s also a situation where you’ve got to be careful because you have the pool there you have water. And some people have tables out there, you don’t want to just be mass applying chemicals above some of these areas. So it’s it can be kind of tricky. But you just got to trust that whether you’re doing it yourself or whether you’re hiring somebody you want to trust and watch them and see that hopefully what they’re doing you’re comfortable with because you don’t want that pesticide ending up on places where you might be feeding your family or laying on the ground necessarily or in the pool swimming with you. So again, this is Ben with Ben’s pest control. And if you’re having a problem with spiders, please give us a call. We can give you one of our free 50 Point inspections. Our phone number is 772-878-1972 or you can check out our website at WWW dot bense. Pest up is thank you and I hope you have a bug free day Transcribed by https://otter.ai
