The Cool Summer Kept Insect Numbers Down But Nobody Told the Brown Recluse Spider to Stop Breeding

We made it to the middle of September without the usual hordes of insects around my yard. Although I notice the mosquitoes still attack in large enough numbers in the evenings that their population growth didn't suffer much from the cooler summer.

Even efforts to keep water from pooling in the drainage ditch at a minimum seem ineffective against those guys. I guess there's just no stopping them, they're almost as stubborn as I am.

I got lucky with the ants this year though. I only had one incident of ant presence in my kitchen. I seen them streaming into the trashcan one day. I don't know what attracted them, but they sure liked something in that trash. As soon as I emptied the contents that invasion stopped.

The usual invading pests didn't bother me much. In fact I haven't seen any pill bugs or centipedes this year. That's unusual here in Indiana, and the numbers of flies buzzing around my head was fewer than I'm used to. Sometimes the blowflies stray into my office on a daily basis, trying to drive me crazy as they make their pestering runs between the computer screen and me.

I do have a big situation with brown recluse spiders. They started appearing in my house a couple years ago, and I'm fighting a constant war keeping control over them.

I remember when the headline news articles about recluse spiders always came out of the western United States. Reporters here in Indiana always said we didn't need fear bites from brown recluse because we didn't have any of these spiders here.

Every time I go into my storage barn I run across a recluse. I initially noticed them last spring when I pulled the mower out to cut the grass for the first time this year. They went scurrying for cover as soon as I opened that door.

I sprayed that day, and I know I decreased their numbers, but next time I went into the barn I felt like they'd hatched out a whole new horde of baby spiders, because they seemed everywhere again.

After I did a pest control inspection I realized the recluse I saw did include some new hatchlings, but I didn't see many of them until I moved something. The spiders that lived behind, and under, stored items escaped earlier treatment because the item blocked the spray, and it didn't reach them.

There's a lot of stuff in that barn, so I had a summer long battle fighting brown recluse spiders because every time I picked something up in the barn I found another one or two of them. Kept me on my toes keeping from getting bit. You gotta keep a constant watch for them rascals - they're sneaky.

If you have an out building where you store a lot of stuff be careful when you move things around. You might find some unwelcome guests hiding in there.

I recommend you wear some good thick work gloves. Those brown recluse spiders have nasty bites, but their fangs don't pierce through thick leather.

Joseph Jackson is an experienced pest control technician and author of SPIDER RIDDANCE, a how to guide for performing do-it-yourself pest control for controlling spiders, and other how to do-it-yourself pest control techniques found at BUG RIDDANCE, Mice And Rats, Too!

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