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Where do House Spiders come from?

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Most homes have a handful of spiders each season, often found in corners, or in dark basements, or storage closets and places where other bugs are likely to be found. Addressing a spider issue is often the same as addressing other pest issues.  

How do they get into your house?

Spiders have their colonies in places that aren’t often cleaned – but it’s not because they’re dirty – it’s just that they can build a web that survives longer here, and are unlikely to be disturbed by larger animals (yourself included). Spiders use spots such as holes, cracks, plumbing, pipes, and cables to move around and make new nests. 

It’s a good idea to check outside for cobwebs. In most cases, more external spider activity will lead to more internal spider activity. Additionally, spiders natural love vegetation up against the house, so ivy and close trees or bushes are hotspots for many kinds of spiders. 

Also, keep your storage spaces tidy and neat. Dust them off frequently, and try to ensure you take down webs that pop up, using a vacuum or broom. 

In many cases, cobwebs aren’t the only signs of spiders. Though a majority of house spiders are the web-spinning kind like the American house spider or the black widow – a large portion of commonly spotted home spiders include species such as the wolf spider and jumping spider – who don’t spin a web and instead rely purely on pursuing and hunting to eat.

Do they lay eggs?

Yes. Spiders lay eggs and house spiders are no exception. In fact, the American house spider, Parasteatoda tepidariorum, can lay as many as 250 eggs in a single egg sac. And they lay egg sacs quite frequently.

Naturally, only the females lay eggs. The female house spiders are also more likely to stick around. The male spiders don’t stay in the same place for long and instead go searching for mates. The females, however, stay in their cobwebs for months even if they capture no prey – at which point they will simply relocate to another place in hopes of a better catch.

These persistent female house spiders are often the cause of more spiders in your home. Although not all of them give birth to 250 spiders per batch, they can easily increase the spider population of your home by a hundred in one go. Before you become too worried, note that most of these spiderlings, sadly, will be killed or will die naturally before they become adults.

What attracts spiders?

As mentioned above, the primary factor that causes a spider infestation in a home is plentiful food. 

Pests such as cockroaches and flies are the staple diet of spiders. A thriving spider population means that you have an endless supply of bugs and insects and it’s probably going to be more important to get rid of these bugs and insects first before their population gets out of control and then shift your attention to the spiders.

Unlike spiders, who are carnivores and are attracted by other insects and bugs – the insects and bugs themselves are attracted by all sorts of things from stale food to open garbage bins and leftovers to kitchen waste and moisture.

How to get rid of House Spiders

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Spider repellents

The easiest way of getting rid of house spiders is to fill your home with a scent they hate – in this case: citrus. 

Methods for diffusing citrus throughout your home could include rubbing citrus fruit peels (lemons and oranges mostly) along your windowsills and bookshelves, or burning citrus candles. You can also use citrus or lemon-scented furniture and home cleaners, which helps repel spiders from problem areas and tends to last longer than fresh fruit essence. If you can stand the smell, burning citronella candles every so often is also an option.

In addition to citrus, there are also a variety of homemade repellents you can create from ingredients most people have on hand. 

Using vegetable oils (such as olive oil, canola oil, corn oil, etc.) and a few other highly available ingredients, you can create effective repellents that can be applied to high-traffic spider areas such as windowsills and skirting boards throughout your home.

Let’s see how you can make a spider repellent spray that can potentially kill them too when done the right way – at home.

Ingredients list:

  • Apple cider
  • Pepper
  • Vegetable oil
  • Liquid soap
  • Step 1. Mix one teaspoon of liquid soap, one tablespoon of vegetable oil, one cup of pepper, and one cup of apple cider together. Stir well. 
  • Step 2. Put this solution inside a spray bottle. Now, spray on areas that are infested with spiders and similar places that are likely to be the fallback for the running ones.
  • Step 3. Repeat every few days for best results. 

Such a spray is pretty inexpensive and can be very effective in repelling spiders of all types.

However, you need to have some patience when you use repellents and homemade sprays. It takes time for spiders to completely move out of the home. Unlike you, the house is infinitely big for spiders and they can just relocate to a different place. Multiple passes are important if you wish to fix the spider problem permanently.

Vacuuming

Vacuuming is great for taking care of a single spider or two. You can use your household vacuum cleaner to pull away any spiders along with any webs you can find. Spiders can move fast on their webs but they won’t be faster than the pull of the vacuum.

Sticky traps

Sticky traps are a time-tested way of catching house spiders.

The trick to using sticky traps is to get the spiders to actually walk over them, which can be more of a frustration than you might think. We’ve seen people tape them onto walls and cabinets in hope that an active spider will wander across it in the middle of the night. 

It’s not a bad idea, but instead, you might consider trying to attract other insects that spiders prey on. Placing some small dabs of jelly or crumbs of cheese will attract a variety of other insects, and hopefully a hunting spider shortly after. 

Non-toxic pesticides

If you’re going the pesticide route, we strongly encourage the use of non-toxic pesticides. The good news about pesticides is that they can kill spiders as well as a host of other pests and insects (which are likely because spiders don’t exist in isolation). 

Experts suggest that pesticides, even if non-toxic, should generally be used outside your home. Having a professional treat your home exterior with a pesticide spray can help in reducing the spider population especially if you’ve identified problem areas that would be difficult to seal for exclusion.

What do House Spiders eat?

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House spiders are carnivores and predominantly eat smaller insects and flies.

Spiders are, in many ways, ideal for pest control. Their diet includes (but is not limited to): 

How do house spiders eat their prey?

Many spiders spin webs to catch their prey. Once stuck, the insect tries to flee, producing vibrations throughout the entire web network. This sends a signal to the spider, which might be somewhere else entirely (which definitely helps given spiders are mostly blind even with four pairs of eyes).

The digestion process then officially beings — albeit outside of the body. The spider will inject venom into the prey with its fangs. This venom also doubles up as a liquifying digestive enzyme that breaks meats down, apart from being a subduing, paralyzing, or even a killing agent.

The prey’s meat is turned into a semi-solid fluid and subsequently drank. Yuck.

As a precautionary measure, some spiders also wrap their victims in the web before eating them. These are generally the more vicious of the lot (such as ground spiders or the black widow). On the other hand, some spiders do it just to save the meal for later.

In addition to their primary webs, Spiders also have signal threads. This signal thread connects the main web to the ground. These are usually deployed in corners that insects frequent. When an insect produces vibrations in the signal thread, the spider can hurry down to trap it.

Web-spinning spiders like the American house spider or the black widow are adept at working their way around their webs. Unbeknownst to the prey (and very much by design), only some parts of the web are sticky. 

Do spiders drink water?

Every living organism on Earth needs water to stay alive. 

Spiders don’t drink water the conventional way. They absorb water and moisture from natural sources. For example, spiders in the wild can suck up water from droplets on vegetation and even from morning dew. 

Spiders can go a couple of months without water. Being very energy efficient as well as cold-blooded, they have negligible heat production in their body (their metabolism is also extremely slow compared to similarly-sized insects), which helps them retain body moisture for longer.

You’re unlikely to find your resident house spider drinking water off a dripping tap or droplets on the floor. A large part of their water intake comes from consuming their prey. 

How long do House Spiders live?

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The biological name of this species is Parasteatoda tepidariorum, often abbreviated as P. tepidariorum.

In short: the house spider doesn’t generally live for more than a year. However, that’s not the case with all types of spiders. 

So, why can they live so long? 

Spiders have evolved in ways that maximize energy efficiency. Most spiders can go months without food or water.

  • Being carnivores, they need less food quantity than herbivore insects.
  • Metabolic variance is vast, with some species metabolizing 50% slower than average because of the need to thrive in habitats with an inconsistent food supply. 
  • Being cold-blooded, they don’t produce heat to adapt to changing ambient temperatures.

Do spiders hibernate?

Hibernation is a chemical process that makes a spider metabolism extremely slow. You can find hibernating spiders under tree barks, cellars, attics, or missing out on all the winter action, quite literally, under a rock.

The house spider does not hibernate per se, but they do become less active at certain times of the year. Some might burrow or form egg nests and other types of silken retreats. They might also choose someplace generally damp and warm to stay alive in the winter months.

On the plus side, house spiders are easier to spot and kill during the winters as they’re typically far less active.

How long do they live without food and water?

House spiders usually have some reserve food and water within their body. Completely devoid of food and water stores though, a house spider can survive for somewhere between 4-8 weeks.

Unlike other cold-blooded animals, a house spider’s metabolism isn’t related to its size. In general, the larger the body, the faster the metabolism — but that’s not the case with spiders. What this means is that if you have a spider and a cricket of comparable size, the cricket will need roughly twice the amount of food to get by. As spiders depend on ambush-based hunting, they spend very little  energy on acquiring their meals.

Why do Crickets chirp?

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Interestingly, there is some variance to the chirps. Here’s the lowdown on some of your resident crickets’ favorite songs:

  1. A loud and droning chirp is used as a call to a female.
  2. A softer and quicker chirp pattern is used to woo a (known) nearby female.
  3. Also, male crickets often have to confront each other to dominate – they also chirp during these confrontations.
  4. Rarely, crickets will also chirp when they sense trouble. It’s sort of like a warning to others.

Crickets aren’t the only insects that use chirps: Katydids, a species that shares the same order Order (Orthoptera) as crickets, also use chirps for very similar reasons. However, these sounds can also mean that they’re trying to warn off predators, something very unlikely for crickets to do.

What do crickets sound like?

Cricket sounds are low-frequency repetitive noises.

Here’s an example:

The tonality of the sound depends on the gap between the serrations or wing wrinkles (see next section for more).

The sound might be pleasant to some but when heard non-stop, it can quickly become repetitive and frustrating. Those with homes surrounded by weeds, grasses, or wilderness will know the deafening volume a large group of crickets can achieve.

How do they make that sound?

The chirping sound is made by rubbing the front wings together. The edges of their wings have a serrated pattern. It produces a chirping sound when rubbed against a sharp ridge on the wing (scraper).

So essentially, the scraper from one wing is rubbed against the serrations on the other wing. Imagine running a finger down the teeth of a comb. Crickets just do it very fast.

The technical term for producing vibrations (and consequently sound) this way is “stridulation”.

Do crickets only make noise at night?

Crickets are mostly nocturnal insects, so yes, but there’s more to it than that. 

First — in general, crickets prefer dark places. If you see a cricket infestation in a home, you’ll find that they typically concentrate in darker (and moist) regions.

Second — during the day there are too many sounds drowning low-frequency ones, such as people, traffic, appliances, and so on. The nighttime is when nearly everything is dead quiet. Consequently, a low-frequency sound like a cricket chirp is going to be perfectly audible under the quiet of the night sky. 

Crickets are also very sensitive to noises and vibrations in general. That’s why they get quiet when you approach them. Usually, predators approach crickets quietly and once a cricket picks up vibration using its tympanal organ (unlike ears that we have), it goes quiet to hopefully throw the predator off its trail.

How to get rid of Crickets

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Where do crickets live in the home?

First, we need to find where the crickets have established themselves. Typically, where there are eggs, there are crickets (and vice versa). 

Crickets love to live in: 

  1. Moist, damp, and wet areas
  2. Warm spots near heat sources (bonus if they’re damp)
  3. Hard-to-reach cracks and crevices
  4. Near a good food source (crickets love to eat plants, seeds, or other bug remains)

Female crickets find damp and moist areas within your home to lay their eggs. You can often spot a female cricket carrying eggs on her back — they look a lot like small grains of rice. It’s also worth noting that it’s perfectly normal to find a bunch of cricket eggs that suddenly disappear and then mistakenly believe that they’re gone, when in fact they’ve just been relocated for protection purposes. Males (and other species) are aggressive and will eat the eggs. 

Cricket traps

There are many types of cricket traps. In fact, you can make one with a soda can.

Many traps, however, are best suited for larger crickets — and unfortunately, many crickets found inside the home are quite small. 

The way to go is to use sticky traps.

You can buy sticky traps for insects off of Amazon. In a pinch you could probably use very sticky tape. Glue traps that use adhesives can also capture other insects and accumulate dust over time, so be sure to replace them with new ones.

You can also use water in place of adhesives. Put a dish of water and mix some vanilla extract and lemon juice into it. Crickets will be drawn to it and drown in it. A little dark, but effective.

Molasses traps are also extremely effective. Take a jar and mix a healthy amount of molasses with water in it. Use this concoction as you wish – either by placing it directly where you hear the crickets or by taking a spoonful out of the jar and placing it in containers around the home to maximize your coverage.

Place such traps in walls, floor cracks, or ceiling crevices where you suspect crickets walk or chirp from.

Vacuuming

Vacuuming is a great way to find and trap one-off cases of crickets. Much like catching cockroaches, vacuuming can help you nip an infestation in its bud.

Sometimes you can hear the cricket but you can’t find it — in which case you can set a lure to draw the cricket into the open using common household edibles such as cornmeal, cereal, or bits of fruit. 

Boric acid

Another nifty way of dealing with cricket infestations is to use boric acid insect dust. You can buy some and apply it inside cracks, wall or furniture voids, and other types of crevices.

Boric acid dust kills crickets and other insects when they come in contact with the powder.

You can also directly apply granules of boric acid in places nobody frequents, such as if you have a cricket infestation in your basement. Make a radius with boric acid covering the infested area and wait a day for most of them to consume it and die off.

Do Crickets lay eggs?

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How many eggs do crickets lay?

Generally, most breeds of crickets lay 5-10 eggs a day. Throughout her life, a female cricket will go through the egg-laying cycle nearly 10 times. So that means about a hundred eggs from a single cricket.

However, not all eggs survive, and not all newly hatched crickets survive either. Not to mention some female crickets are less prolific than others.

Still, as a general rule of thumb, expect a single female cricket to lay around 60-100 eggs in her lifetime.

Given enough food, water, and a satisfactory temperature – crickets will keep mating and reproducing abundantly. They are one of the fastest-growing “crops” and if you’re breeding them for your pets, you have a free supply of pet food (such as for geckos, chameleons, snakes, bearded dragons, and so on).

Where do they lay eggs?

Male crickets have a tendency to destroy eggs, so female crickets lay eggs in places that are hard to find or hard to reach for these predatory males. 

  • House crickets typically lay eggs in crevices, wall cracks, moist areas, dark flooring spaces, etc. 
  • Field crickets lay eggs throughout the forest floor such as in the soil or tree trunks and other plant material.

In addition to finding tricky hiding places, females routinely relocate the eggs. This can make it difficult to address interior home infestations. 

The first relocation typically happens within a week of laying the eggs at the original place.

How often do they lay eggs?

Like other insects, Crickets reproduce quickly and frequently.

The female cricket can begin laying eggs from the age of 8-10 days old after mating. She will lay eggs in batches for close to two months. 

The cricket mating season typically takes place in the spring. The hatching period largely depends on the temperature. More heat means more egg activity, and you can hatch cricket eggs faster by supplying (slightly) more heat to the incubation. For example, taking the heat up to 86°F will make the eggs hatch in 13 days, much faster than the room temperature’s (74°F) 26 days.

A female cricket stores up sperm from multiple male crickets. She then keeps laying eggs for 2-3 weeks, every other day. After 2-3 weeks, the cricket must re-mate to refill on her stored sperms to lay eggs again.

What do cricket eggs look like?

Cricket eggs look like shiny little grains of rice. It’s easy to miss cricket eggs in grains of sand or soil — but sometimes females can be found carrying sacks of eggs on their backside.

What do Crickets eat?

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What do crickets eat in the wild?

Crickets eat a variety of natural proteins and plants in the wild. This includes grasses, fruits, leaves, seeds, flowers, aphids, and larvae of other insects.

Crickets will eat seeds and small fruits that are available to them. Their plant diet will differ depending on which plant species grow where they live. Common plant food sources include chicory, ragweed, and crabgrass.

When food becomes scarce, crickets generally rely on animal remains (deceased animal parts), living organisms (such as larvae of other insects), or other insects directly. Wild field crickets are known to include more animal matter in their diet.

What do you feed crickets for your pets?

Crickets can be fed an all-plants diet for your pet. You’ll need to grow or buy a variety of things.

General recommendations:

  1. There are dozens of popular commercial foods made for crickets. A quick trip to the grocery store or pet store should produce several viable and affordable options. 
  2. Fruits are nutritious for crickets and your pets – and they quite like them. Apples, oranges, and bananas are great to start with.
  3. Vegetables are also a good option. Leafy greens, squash, potatoes, and carrots are all great options to feed your crickets.
  4. Many types of grains also work well with a cricket’s appetite. Common grains include wheat germ, rice cereal, and alfalfa.
  5. Pet foods can also be fed to crickets in smaller quantities. Fish flakes, dry dog and cat food, reptile food, and so on can be experimented with. These have no drawbacks for the cricket’s health but not all crickets will prefer all types of pet food, so it’s all about testing which pet foods work and which ones don’t.

Note that whatever your crickets eat will directly go on to providing a majority of the total nutritional value for your pet. Though crickets themselves have a lot of protein, it’s important to feed them good, clean, and fresh food to make your pet healthier.

Regardless of what you feed your crickets, it’s equally important to know how many crickets to feed to your pet daily. This usually differs from pet to pet.

Some general recommendations (for illustrative purposes) are below: 

Bearded dragons

  • Very young bearded dragons (1-3 months of age) need about 30-50 crickets three times per day. These have to be one-week-old crickets (quarter inches).
  • Slightly older bearded dragons (3-9 months of age) can do with 50-70 medium crickets daily twice per day.
  • Adult bearded dragons (more than 9 months old) need close to 70 crickets per week. 10 crickets per day will suffice. 

Geckos

  • Young crested geckos can eat 3-5 micro crickets once per day.
  • 4-10 months old crested geckos need 4-6 medium crickets up to 4 days a week.
  • Maturing crested geckos can eat 7-8 large crickets 3-4 days per week.

Leopard and tokay geckos generally have a similar diet but you should replace medium crickets with ¼” crickets initially. Maturing geckos of all types can easily eat 3-8 large crickets every other day.

Veiled chameleons

The bone ridge on the back of the veiled chameleon is an indicator of its weight. That’s how you can look out at their diet much more closely.

Here’s a common dietary plan to follow:

  • 1-3 months old veiled chameleons should be fed 6 tiny crickets twice per day. Crickets up to one week old work best.
  • 3-6 months old veiled chameleons can be fed 10-13 small crickets every day.
  • 6-10 months old veiled chameleons should be fed 15-20 medium-sized crickets every alternating day.
  • Veiled chameleons older than 10 months can eat 5-7 large crickets every other day. 

How to get rid of Centipedes

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Centipedes comprise a diverse group of predatory arthropods. Although around 3,000 species of centipedes have been studied and some scientists believe that there are more than 8,000 worldwide.

House centipedes (Scutigera coleoptrata), are the most familiar to people and the most common request for pest treatment professionals.

These yellow-gray centipedes can grow up to 15 pair of legs. They may be found outside, where they will thrive in damp, cool, and dark conditions, or they may live inside buildings — mostly in basements, crawl spaces, ground-floor rooms, and typically-moist areas such as kitchens, laundry rooms, and bathrooms. 

If you have centipedes inside your home, they pose very little danger to your physical health in themselves. Their presence does, however, indicate a moisture or humidity problem, which can indeed be harmful for your health.

As house centipedes, which are predators, commonly eat pest bugs like cockroaches and clothes moths, they can be quite helpful.

How to Get Rid of House Centipedes

The single best way to get rid of house centipedes on your property would be to render your home unlivable — something that will also, incidentally, lead to health benefits for you, and help maintain the structural integrity of your property. 

House centipedes have primitive respiratory systems that feature spiracles — small holes on their bodies, through which oxygen can be delivered directly into their tissues.

Unlike many other arthropods, house centipedes cannot open and close their spiracles. To prevent dehydration and respiratory distress, they require humid or moist environments. If those aren’t present, centipedes will not be able to survive. 

The Environmental Protection Agency generally recommends that people take steps to maintain relative humidity levels between 30 and 50 percent throughout their homes to prevent health complications — including those that result from mold and bug infestations that tend to follow excessive humidity. 

To fight excessive humidity, you can:

  • Have any leaky pipes or gutters repaired as soon as possible to put a halt to localized moisture buildup. 
  • Increase ventilation in the humid areas of your home by opening windows often, or by installing exhaust fans in rooms like kitchens and bathrooms. 
  • Physically wipe down any buildup of condensation as soon as possible, including by, for instance, drying your bathtub after use.
  • Purchase a dehumidifier to deal with a chronic humidity problem that cannot be fixed with increased ventilation. Basements and crawlspaces are both often hard to ventilate, after all.

You can also enlist the help of natural centipede repellents, which include neem oil, cayenne pepper, and cedar essential oil. 

Your other option would be to call a professional pest management company, or to take out the bug spray and bug bombs and get to work. Bug bombs have certain health risks, but are generally effective at wiping out all pest infestations within a home, not just centipedes. Remember, house centipedes kill other nasty bugs in your home too, and by solely focusing on them, you may find yourself dealing with other — worse — bugs in higher numbers.

How to Kill Centipedes in Sinks and Drains

Attracted by moisture, house centipedes are known to crawl up through pipes, emerging around sinks and drains in bathrooms and kitchens.

Pouring boiling hot water down the drains should help, but the most strongly recommended strategy will also actually give your pipes a nice cleaning. Pour vinegar into your sink, and follow that up with a sprinkling of baking soda.

How to Get Rid of Outdoor Centipedes

The best option for gardens tends to be sprinkling a healthy amount of diatomaceous earth. This will naturally fight both centipedes and numerous other pests. 

How to identify Centipedes

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What do Centipedes Look Like?

Centipedes, which belong to the Chilopoda group of arthropods, are a diverse family of species.

Over 3,000 have been identified to date, and thousands more are strongly believed to roam the globe. As with any really diverse species, there’s a lot of variation in their visual appearance. 

The house centipede, which bears the Latin name Scutigera coleoptrata, is one of the more prevalent centipede species — as well as the kind you are most likely to encounter within your home and around your garden, if you live in the United States or Europe.

These bugs:

  • Have long and flat bodies. 
  • Have a gray-yellow color, with the legs and antennae being lighter.
  • Have four pairs of legs when they hatch, acquiring more with each molting or change in their life stage. House centipedes can have up to 15 pairs of legs by the end of their lives.
  • Measure between one and one 1 ½ inches. Once you take their long antennae and longer back legs into account, house centipedes can appear to be up to four inches long. The females’ hind legs are longer than the males’.
  • Have clearly visible mandibles.

Other types of centipedes can be larger in size, as well as having different colors that include a deep brown, gray, black, and gray with bright yellow legs and a yellow head. In shape, however, all members of the centipede family have a similar appearance.

What’s the Difference Between Centipedes and Millipedes?

Centipedes and millipedes are both arthropods with many legs and long bodies separated into numerous segments. Both are groups, rather than species — and over 12,000 individual millipede species have been identified. Centipedes belong to the Chilopoda class, and millipedes belong to the Diplopoda class.

Compared to centipedes, millipedes:

  • Tend to have a rounder, more “worm-like” appearance. 
  • Feature more, but shorter, segments. 
  • Have two pairs of legs for every body segment.
  • Have smaller, shorter, and thinner legs as compared to the rest of their bodies.
  • Have a pointy rear end, devoid of any tail-like appendages. 
  • Move slowly, while centipedes can, as predators, be rather fast.

Millipedes (meaning “a thousands legs”; not a literal description) are arthropods, just like centipedes, and have numerous legs and long bodies. These are, however, very different groups of bugs. Centipedes are predators (though, they aren’t particularly dangerous to humans). Millipedes are, on the other hand, mainly herbivores, bugs that feed on decaying plant and organic matter such as leaves, fungi, and emerging seedlings.

What Do Centipedes Eat?

Common house centipedes are known as insectivores, meaning creatures that eat insects, but arachnids also feature heavily on their menus.

House centipedes need constantly moist or humid conditions to protect themselves against ever-looming dehydration, prefer cooler temperatures, and search for dark environments.

They also require a constant supply of food. If they live within your property, their diet will include pest bugs like:

  • Cockroaches
  • Silverfish
  • Dust mites
  • Smaller spiders
  • Ants
  • Bed bugs
  • Clothes moths

With the exception of spiders, which likewise prey on harmful pests, these are all bugs you don’t want on your property.

Not only are many of them associated with high moisture levels (which pose their own threats to your home, including that of a mold infestation), their presence can also cause health complications. Getting rid of centipedes (and many other indoor pests) can often mean fixing moisture or structural issues with your home.

Therefore, even though house centipedes are commonly considered a pest, or at least a nuisance, they can be actively helpful as they manage other pests.