1mo ago

Question about spooder deterrence/deterrants

I live in the American Midwest and my building gets a LOT of orb weavers on my balcony. I don’t mind them so much but they accumulate rapidly and have a rather successful feeding frenzy in the summer time. They get a bit territorial and when try to reason with them they just shake their webs menacingly at me. Anyway this makes having guests difficult so I am wondering if any of you fine people have suggestions for humane temporary deterrents? I’ve heard citronella is useful?

4 comments

Anyway this makes having guests difficult so I am wondering if any of you fine people have suggestions for humane temporary deterrents?
Just stop inviting people over. If they insist on visiting, feed them to your spiders. If you want it to be humane, warn them first and if they still want to come over that is on them, they knew they would be spider food.
- All good points
Obligatory Caitlin Henderson video.
More serious: There aren't any reliable deterrences as far as I'm aware.
But since you're dealing with orb-weavers one option would be to just destory their webs before you're having people over. Depending on which kind of orb-weavers you have this will give you at least few hours before they rebuild, maybe even till next morning.
To reduce the spiders, one must reduce the bugs. That will be difficult on a balcony.