Archive for the ‘Pest Questions’ Category

Nov 8, 2012 – Amazing Webs And Spiders

QUESTION:

My daughters k-1 class wants to know why spiders don’t get caught in their own webs and do they get caught in other spiders’ webs?

ANSWER:

The web-making of spiders, and the large garden Orb Weavers in the family Araneidae in particular, have been the subject of intensive and lengthy studies for many, many years. The orb weavers make the large, symmetrical and beautiful webs that we see along garden paths in the summer, ready to ensnare any insect that tries to fly along that pathway. Some species even eat their entire web each night and rebuild it for the next day, ensuring a web without any damage from wind or birds that might have stumbled through it. The chemicals of their silk are precious commodities, so by eating it they can recycle the material for the new web. 

The silk itself is an incredible chemical composition that may be ejected through 16 or more openings at the end of the spider’s abdomen, manipulated and wrapped to increase its strength. As the spider builds the web it places a series of spots of “glue” on certain strands, and it is this glue that is the actual stickiness of the web, not the silk itself. The spider that builds the web then instinctively avoids, as much as possible, those strands that have the glue on them, choosing instead non-glued strands when they need to race across that web to grab, bite, and paralyze some insect that has blundered into the web. But, as added insurance the spider also exudes some oil onto the tips of its feet, and it is this oil that further prevents it from getting stuck on its own web should it come into contact with that glue. So, without the glue there is a chance that a spider could be stuck on its own webbing. 
With this in mind I suppose the answer to the second question regarding other spiders’ webs would be that any spider whose feet are properly oiled could walk on the silk of another spider and not get stuck in the webbing. However, perhaps a spider on the wrong web might have a greater chance of being stuck if it did not properly recognize the strands that were glued versus non-glued, whereas on its own web it probably feels right at home and more rapidly “knows” which strands to use for travel. And, spiders probably are likely to avoid the webs of other spiders, particularly webs of other KINDS of spiders, as the structure of the webs of different kinds can be very different. 

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Pest QuestionsNovember 08, 2012

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Nov 5, 2012 – Adapted to the Dry

QUESTION:

On rare occasions I am confronted by clusters of centipedes. My question is how in this usually very dry climate (Nevada) do these moisture loving insects appear, seemingly out of nowhere? Secondly, are they always present and are just waiting for some moisture like a pipe leak to make their presence felt?

ANSWER:

I think the answer lies in the fact that every habitat has its occupants, and many kinds of centipedes have adapted to life in very dry environments. However, they still have a problem retaining body moisture, as their exoskeleton may be more porous than that of most other arthropods, so they will be nocturnal to avoid sunlight and the hot daytime and they will hind in dark places where, hopefully, there is some level of moisture to help them out. 

You did not go into details on exactly where you are finding these cluster of centipedes. Are they someplace indoors or are they under objects on the ground outside? Why you would suddenly find groups of them in one location is a good question, and since I can’t think like a centipede we just have to guess at the answer. Perhaps that place where you found them presented the coolest place around with the highest level of moisture, and that drew them to the same location. Perhaps there is some relatively abundant food resource in that area and following the nocturnal banquet they all withdrew to the nearest available harborage. 
I would guess that centipedes, at some level, are always present but are hiding really well. The axiom “Nature hates a void” means that available space is going to get occupied by living organisms around it, and if other insects and appropriate hiding places exist then the predatory bugs are going to discover it and hang around until those resources run out. Certainly a water leak could increase the attractiveness of a place, as well as attract other insects that like the moisture and could serve as food for predators like spiders and centipedes. Another great reason to manage excessive moisture problems. 

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Pest QuestionsNovember 07, 2012

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Nov 6, 2012 – Fact or Fiction, Effective or Failure?

QUESTION:

I was asked today about using cotton balls in a bowl of bleach to keep squirrels away? I told this customer I had never heard that before. It sounds like a tall tale but I don’t know much about it. What do you know?

ANSWER:

This is fun. The internet provides such a wealth of bad information that homeowners can go to, that I suspect this customer picked this one up at some website offering home remedies to keep squirrels away. First, though, let’s examine the legality of this with respect to the involvement of a pest management professional. The EPA defines a “pesticide” as any substance that prevents, destroys, repels, or mitigates in any way any pest. The word “repels” is very important there, as the use of substances like mint oil, garlic oil, moth balls, or bleach to repel animals would be to use them as “pesticides”, and nearly all pesticides must be registered for that use by EPA. Now, there are certain “exempt” active ingredients that can forego EPA registration, but they still need to be properly labeled for this kind of use in pest management. 

Thus, we as PMP’s are obligated to use products properly labeled for that use, and I would go further to suggest that we AVOID making what would be taken as a recommendation for a homeowner to use these concoctions as well. In a case like this, if I open the door to all possibilities, if you agree with this customer that sure, what the heck, bleach might work really well to annoy squirrels enough to make them go away, you have put your stamp of approval on this use. Now the homeowner puts out a big bowl of bleach with a pile of cotton balls in it and their dog eats them and dies. Guess who is to blame for the death of the dog? Yep………it really does pay to tread lightly around issues like this and stick to what we know is tried, true, and legal. 
In this case I don’t know where this homeowner would want to put that bleach, but perhaps it’s in the attic for tree squirrels or maybe on the ground under a bird feeder or just someplace around the fence line. Presumably bleach (or moth balls or other oils) would repel by creating a strong enough odor that the animals don’t like it, and if it is that strong it could also be harmful to pets and people. By the way, if you want to scare the beejeebies out of people show them the MSDS for good old 5% household bleach. If we had a pesticide with that horrific of wording we’d never use it. The LD-50 in rats is 5800 mg/kg, making it MUCH more toxic than the diluted insecticides we apply within structures. 
But, people are always looking for something other than “toxic pesticides” to use to kill or repel their unwanted bugs and rodents, so they look to household materials that they feel comfortable with, or use plant based chemicals and other “natural” chemicals that they have been convinced are not toxic to humans. How could they be toxic? They’re from plants. You know, from plants, like strychnine and nicotine. So, I suspect that many smelly materials would be repellent to squirrels but also to people. A major constituent of bleach is chlorine, and we know how irritating and painful chlorine can be when we inhale too much of it, so repelling rodents might require that excessive exposure too. 

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Pest QuestionsNovember 06, 2012

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Nov 3, 2012 – Bait – Shortcomings and Truths

QUESTION:

Are there any rodent baits with Drying Agents that help control odors by drying the body out quicker? I have read the odor questions and using Bac-A-Zap, etc. Also, is there a legal bait for feral cats?



ANSWER:

First on the cats. NO. No, there are no toxins labeled for harming feral cats or feral dogs or many other vertebrate animals, and it is likely that if someone is caught poisoning cats using their own concoctions or an illegal use of rodent baits that person, when caught, is going to be arrested, fined, and hung by his toes by people who, rightfully, strongly protest the harming of cats. Even though they are “feral” animals and in a sense now live a wild existence, they still are offspring of our beloved household kitties, and killing them is not going to be appropriate. For feral cats it is going to be touchy, but working with a local animal control agency you would probably be allowed to live-trap feral cats and take them to that agency for disposition. One concern, of course, is that what one person considers feral or a nuisance cat may just be some neighbor’s cat that spends a lot of time outdoors, and killing that cat is going to cause some serious difficulties. 

On rodents, again no. As far as I know no manufacturer is putting anything in their rodent baits that could accelerate the desiccation of a dead rodent. However, that myth continues to circulate from people who either don’t know any better or who are trying to market a bait under false pretenses, that the anticoagulant baits cause the dead rodent to dry out and not to stink. This just does not occur, and our industry’s rodent control experts tell us this from time to time to keep our knowledge fresh. The dead rodent is going to dehydrate when it is darned good and ready to do so, and for rats this will take a lot longer than for mice, and for dead rats hidden within walls or back in the far reaches of the attic there likely will be foul odors for quite a long time. There also will likely be blow flies developing in that carcass, since that is what blow flies do – seek out and begin the decomposition and recycling of dead animals. 
It is important for us to recognize that most rodenticide labels will have an instruction to, as the Ditrac Blox label does as an example, “collect and dispose of all dead, exposed animals and leftover bait”. A couple of very important points are made here. The first is that by stating this on the Label it becomes mandatory that the PMP return to find and remove dead rodents, not a suggestion, but mandatory. So, the one-shot rodent control in a home won’t work. Return visits are needed to comply with the Label, and the dead rodents that lie in inaccessible locations are going to be a problem, now not only with the flies and odors, but also for Label compliance. This is one reason that trapping may be preferred over baiting inside many structures. 
The second issue there is that removal of all “leftover” bait, again telling us that leaving bait in the attic or crawl space may not be legal. It also takes the bait out of our control and opens the door to possible non-target animals finding it and eating it at some point in the future. 
A couple more points on Fun Myths About Rodent Baits. Rodents that eat anticoagulant baits do NOT “get thirsty” and go outside to find water and thus die there. They will die inside a structure as often as they do outside. It just depends on where that rodent is in the few days after eating one of these chronic baits when it is overcome with the effect of the active ingredient. Another twist on the dehydration myth is that rodent baits cause mummification of the rodent so that it does not create odors. Also not true. 

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Pest QuestionsNovember 05, 2012

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Nov 4, 2012 – Knock, Knock. Who’s There? Insecticide.

QUESTION:

Insects can either excrete broken down pesticides or use their spiracles to keep them from penetrating as a defense mechanism against harmful substances. Can we assume that, sometimes, well done applications/treatments simply don’t work because of this, considering that the right products and equipment were used?

ANSWER:

I think you just gave a pretty decent example of pesticide resistance. It is true that insects do have the ability to slam shut their spiracles for awhile when they detect something harmful in the air. This may protect them from drowning for some length of time if they fall into water, or keep irritants like fine dusts out of their air pathways. They didn’t survive all these hundreds of millions of years by being patsies and cooperating with us. 

It also is true that many insects have varying susceptibilities to insecticide active ingredients. Our most potent example these days is The Common Bed Bug, which, as one of our industry researchers put it recently, has an amazing ability to develop resistance to chemicals in general. Our most important example of an insecticide that can be metabolized to molecules that are not toxic to it and then to excrete the materials is pyrethrum. It has long been known that the German cockroach is hard to kill with just pyrethrum alone, and this is why piperonyl butoxide is nearly always added as a synergist. The roach can break down the pyrethrum molecule, so the PBO in some way blocks that ability and together the two have a better chance of killing the roach, and many other insects. With pyrethrum alone the German roach may flop over on its back and look dead, but commonly they will overcome that knock down effect and survive to pester us another day. 
We should not confuse “resistance” with “immunity”. The roaches and bed bugs are not immune to any insecticide molecules, but through natural selection and exposing these insects to certain active ingredients or groups of related active ingredients for many years, we have created the monster ourselves. Those individuals that had a natural ability to withstand the “normal” dose of the a.i. may have survived and passed that level of resistance onto their offspring. Since insect breed so rapidly and in such numbers we can witness that resistance ourselves in just a few years of using those insecticides. 
What is needed to kill any arthropod pest with a chemical is the combination of Contact Time and Dose. We can still kill bed bugs with products they are resistant to by confining them to a treated surface for a longer period of time (sometimes a LOT longer), or we can increase the dosage rate of the active ingredient and kill them in less time. This is fine in a lab, but in the field we cannot continue to increase the dose above the Label rates. So, we must place the active ingredient onto the surfaces where we expect the pest insect to spend the most time, and for roaches and bed bugs that is going to be directly into the crevices, holes, gaps, cracks, and voids where they spend nearly 18 hours each day. As long as they are not repelled away from that treated surface by the nature of the active ingredient the bug now is resting on a contact insecticide for 18 hours, slowly absorbing it through the unbroken cuticle and into their nervous system. 
So yes, in a sense you are correct, but the missing ingredient is “placement”. We can use the right product and the right equipment but apply the material to surfaces where it doesn’t have a chance to contact the pest arthropod for a long enough time to get enough a.i. into it to kill it. A nice added benefit to crack, crevice, and void treatments is that not only are they the best places to kill the insect, but they also are the best places to avoid unnecessary contact by people. 

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Pest QuestionsNovember 04, 2012

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Nov 1, 2012 – Got Gophers, No Mounds

QUESTION:

I have a customer that is having a gopher problem, but does not have any of the typical “horseshoe” mounds. She only has “feeding holes” made by the gopher in the grass area. Is there a proper way to treat these or to find the main run? I am using a “gopher getter jr.” probe with strychnine bait.

ANSWER:

If this definitely is a gopher creating that hole and feeding damage on the grass then there just have to be soil mounds around the area somewhere, and probably nearby. All of that tunneling that the gopher did to reach this lawn area to feed has created excess soil that the gopher must remove from the burrow system, so even if the mound is hidden under some shrubs or is on the other side of the fence it just has to exist. I’d take a peek over the fences and in hidden places to see what I could find, and once found this may give you a better idea of where the main runways will be. These are the best places to put gopher bait. Dropping the bait down into this feeding hole may not be tempting enough for the animal. 

Or, if you are stuck with nothing more than these feeding holes in the lawn you may want to try trapping. The hole could be enlarged slightly to accommodate a trap set vertically down into that hole, attaching it to a post at the top so the gopher cannot drag the trap away. Trapping in these vertical shafts can be effective, and according to some of the resources I have read on gopher trapping it doesn’t particularly matter whether or not you cover the hole to exclude light. Either way the gopher, hopefully, will investigate what has happened to his nice, neat tunnel and be caught. The Macabee Trap may be smaller and more easily fit into this vertical shaft. 
If you find the soil mounds in a neighbor’s yard, and I sure think it would be weird to find them too far from these feeding holes, you of course would need that neighbor’s permission to do any work on their property. Again, it would seem odd for a gopher to want to shove a lot of soil very far through his tunnel system, and making a new tunnel to the surface on a frequent basis  to exclude the soil is more their nature. Is there any chance these might be burrows of some other animal, such as Norway rats. I’m not sure what they do with the dirt they excavate, but they definitely do not pile it like gophers do. Perhaps the “feeding” on the lawn that you see is instead just the worn pathway of the rat. Look for other signs such as fecal pellets in that immediate area or pathways extending away from the hole. 

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Pest QuestionsNovember 03, 2012

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Nov 2, 2012 – Got Roaches, Got Filth, Still Got Roaches

QUESTION:

I am having trouble with German cockroaches in a restaurant. I have used Gentrol Point Source, Avert Dry Flowable powder, and Arilon with an IGR and can’t seem to get them under control. I know most of the problem is sanitation and the client is supposed to clean the whole restaurant from top to bottom, and that is why I have not used any gel baits, as there are way too many other food sources. Someone had mentioned a fogger. What are your thoughts on that?

ANSWER:

Personally, I think fogging for cockroaches would be your least effective method for achieving actual control of the problem. A few roaches may be out and about when the fogging is done and these roaches may (or may not) be contacted by the droplets when they fall, but the vast majority of them are likely to be tucked away safe in their little crevices and voids where droplets falling from the air would not contact them. 

I guess I would start with the belief that ALL of the products you have used so far are excellent against German roaches. Excellent, that is, if the cockroach and the active ingredient manage to come together in the same place and for a long enough period of time. Gentrol, of course, does not directly kill roaches, but affects their population over a longer period of time by stopping production of new roaches. Avert baits work only if the roach is interested enough in this new food resource to feed on it, and if the restaurant has the sanitation problem you suggest, then the roaches already are perfectly happy with the food materials they are currently eating. You probably will get “some” of the roaches eating this bait or any others, but most of them may ignore it. The Arilon should be a perfectly good contact insecticide, and hopefully you are applying it directly into crevices – not along baseboards or exposed surfaces. Since the roach spends 80% of its time tucked into crevices, holes, voids, and under things that do not get moved, those are exactly the places you want your active ingredient to be too. The roach has to spend enough time directly in contact with the a.i. to be able to absorb sufficient a.i. to kill it, and a quick walk across a “band” of the material applied to walls is not likely to do it. 
SANITATION! Is there a reason this customer is not cooperating in that area? Have you and he actually discussed the need for sanitation with respect to pest management, not to mention just serving healthy food that is not contaminated with bacteria that grow on filth. Toss a cockroach problem in there too and you have a potential Petri dish of pathogens. The roaches crawl into floor drains, toilets, on rodent feces, and into and onto a lot of other surfaces where some really nasty stuff grows……….and then they walk onto the counters where our food is prepared. Just not a good idea. 
I once heard a manufacturer’s rep talk about problems like this, and his final comment was “you might just want to drop them as a client”. What?? You drop THEM because they don’t show an interest in doing their part in the whole process of eliminating filthy roaches? Sure. If their expectation is that you are 100% responsible for eliminating these roaches, but don’t plan to remove the conditions that brought this problem in the first place and now are supporting the roaches, then you will continue to be frustrated. And, if some intolerant restaurant patron finds a roach in her noodle soup then she may look around and see who she can sue over it. 
Perhaps on your next visit, rather than again spraying insecticides onto dirty surfaces, take a written Sanitation Inspection Report and do a thorough inspection of this facility. Note everything that you see that is a “contributing condition” that helps the roaches to do well here, and then sit down and discuss it with the restaurant manager. If he is receptive then work out an action plan of who will do what and when it should be completed, and on your next visit see if any progress is being made. 
In addition, YOU have many sanitation and bio-remediation products that you could apply to dirty surfaces, to drains, to grease traps, to fill in crevices, etc., and offer this service to the customer as well. This is just as much a part of the overall roach management as is the application of insecticides. And, if you have NOT been applying your residual materials directly into the crevices and voids then that would be a better place for them. 

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Pest QuestionsNovember 02, 2012

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Oct 30, 2012 – Can’t We All Just Get Along?

QUESTION:

Why do ants carry other ants when the other ant is still alive? I’ve seen carpenter ants carrying other carpenter ants and I’ve also seen nuisance ants carry other nuisance ants. Why do they do this?

ANSWER:

Ants just don’t get along with each other. Argentine ants are well known for having a friendly attitude from one Argentine Ant colony to another Argentine Ant colony, but they may be the only ones. Most other species of ants have colonies that would be aggressive toward other colonies of the same species, so this might explain why you see carpenter ants hauling other carpenter ants around. Perhaps one colony invaded the other and what you see is the spoils of war. Ants are carnivores, as we know, and an enemy ant could be just as useful for food as a cricket or caterpillar. 

Another possibility is that a colony is simply cleaning house. Worker ants may live for a few months to maybe a year, so in a colony of tens of thousands of worker ants there will be a constant die-off of workers. These may just be gathered up by other workers and tossed out of the colony without any special recognition or memorial for all the work those dead comrades have done. It’s a thankless job being a worker ant. 
Another possibility is that some ant species are highly territorial and aggressive about it, and they may invade colonies of other ants that are competing for the same food resources. I have seen pavement ant colonies overrun by Argentine ants, and the Argentines were bringing all the dead pavement ants out and dumping them on the ground above. Perhaps they had decided to use that handy pavement ant gallery system for their own colony and did not want all the dead bodies of the other ants laying around. 

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Pest QuestionsNovember 01, 2012

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Oct 31, 2012 – Happy Halloween from the Vampire Bugs

QUESTION:

Does a bat bug bite and infest like beg bugs?

ANSWER:

Ahhh……nothing like a little blood sucking bug for the topic on Halloween. Yes, Bat Bugs (Cimex adjunctus and several other species) are perfectly capable of feeding on humans and other animals in a home, but apparently they are NOT capable of continuing their population without the bat hosts they are adapted to. The blood of humans just does not permit them to breed successfully and produce more of their kind. In fact, prior to the resurgence of The Common Bed Bug (Cimex lectularius) bat bugs and swallow bugs were common problems within homes where their host animals were nesting or roosting. This is a very important fact to keep in mind as we now focus so heavily on The Common Bed Bug, and tend to forget that these other species could well be the ones we find inside a home. 

The Bat Bug (BB) is almost identical in appearance to the Common Bed Bug (CBB), and the difference is small enough that you are not about to see it with the naked eye. You MUST carry a magnifier into the field with you, and even a small hand lens may not be powerful enough to make a certain ID. A dissecting microscope capable of magnifying 35X or more would be much better, and this is a tool that no pest control office should be without. For all small insects and for scanning glue traps a dissecting scope is the best way to make accurate identifications. 
The difference with these biting bugs is the hairs that are found along the sides of the prothorax – the first section of the thorax immediately behind the head. On the Bat Bug those hairs are longer than the width of the eye, while on the CBB those hairs are shorter than the width of the eye. So, not only do you need to be capable of clearly seeing those hairs, but you must be able to see the eye as well and make the comparison. If you have Bat Bugs and assume they must be the CBB you will go about a control program that is unnecessary and probably wrong. Control of Bat bugs and Swallow bugs begins with identifying the presence of their preferred host animals and removing and permanently excluding them. Then, the mop up of the bugs can be accomplished without a fresh reservoir of more of them still in the structure. 
Like the CBB, Bat bugs can live for a long time without feeding, possibly up to 1 year. They are just as mobile as the CBB and once they lose their preferred host they quickly travel to find a new blood meal. They may be found more often around window sills or in ceiling lights as they travel from attics or wall voids, and this could be a red flag telling you that something is different. Their feeding habits will be essentially the same as those of the Common bed bug, so capturing some specimens and examining them properly is always a good idea. They definitely will establish themselves within the bedroom and other sleeping areas once they have found humans as a blood host, but will die off on their own since they now lack the proper host to produce new eggs. 

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Pest QuestionsOctober 31, 2012

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Oct 28, 2012 – Eight Legs? Gotta Go.

QUESTION:

How to kill spiders?

ANSWER:

I am a bug lover, and I recognize that most of the 6 and 8 legged critters that hang out around our homes and gardens are beneficial to the landscape. We don’t necessarily want them running across the bedroom wall when we are about to turn off the light at night, and don’t want them on the kitchen counters, but if most of them will just stay outside and do their thing we really need to leave them alone. It should not be our role in professional pest management to try to kill all living creatures in urban areas. Now, please don’t take this as a lecture directed at you Lewayne, because it really isn’t. Is just happened to be an opportunity to hop up on my soap box. There are plenty of times when killing spiders is called for, but other times when we should leave them alone and enjoy their antics or the benefits they bring us. They are, after all, all predators that feed on other bugs. 

So, hunting spiders like jumping spiders, wolf spiders, funnel weavers, and ground spiders, if they are only outside, might best be left alone. They are essentially harmless to people but are voracious predators. Orb weavers that build their large, beautiful webs in the garden but never indoors should be enjoyed for their architecture and beauty. They really aren’t going to hurt anyone either. So, what I am saying is that we, as professionals who are interested in improving the home environment but minimizing the use of pesticides, should make the effort to educate the homeowner so they too recognize that having certain kinds of bugs around their property is appropriate and of benefit to their gardens. This isn’t going to work for all of them, because too many people figure the only good bug is a dead bug, but at least we should take the time to try. 
When an occasional spider is found indoors I really believe that a vacuum cleaner is the best tool, and the homeowner can easily fire it up and remove that offending critter. I am realistic enough to know that in the mind of the regular customer of yours their feeling is that they are paying YOU to keep them from ever having to see a live bug in their house, so one spider will result in a call to YOU to come out and take care of it. Perhaps this can be minimized by setting the expectations right up front when you take on the account, perhaps it cannot. I just don’t see the benefit of spraying thoroughly throughout a home on the inside in the hope of killing the single marauding spider before the customer sees it when 1 minute with a vacuum cleaner does the job better and faster. 
On the exterior I fell in love with the Synthetic Pyrethroids when they first became available for spider control, and they still work great. But, many of them are going to last only a couple of weeks before they degrade to a point that they may not kill the spider that passes over the treated surface. Anything you can do to treat directly onto surfaces where the spiders spend some time will help. There are longer lasting insecticides, such as the microencapsulated formulations and possibly new formulations like Suspend Polyzone that claims to last up to 3 months outdoors. But, pyrethroids have good labeling and work very quickly on spiders and other arachnids. Be aware of the new label restrictions for outdoor uses, but you still can treat broad surfaces on the undersides of eaves as well as 3 feet up along the foundation and into any cracks or crevices. 
Non-chemically you should make some suggestions to the customer based on your initial INSPECTION of the property. If they have a spider problem there must be some reasons, and these reasons generally are that there are plenty of insects to eat and plenty of places to hide, for hunting spiders. Often it is exterior lights that draw the moths and other night-flying bugs, and spiders figure this out and hang out by the lights. These can be turned off at night or bulbs changed to yellow, which is less attractive to insects at night. There may be rubbish or firewood or other piles of things stacked against the outside of the house, and these should be removed or stacked away from the foundation. Any trees or shrubs growing against the exterior walls need to be trimmed away to remove pathways. Thick vegetation near the foundation should be trimmed up off the soil and as much as possible a 2 or 3 foot wide strip of bare soil maintained around the exterior foundation. 
There are several spider web removal products that also claim to discourage web building spiders by making it difficult for them to attach their webs to the walls, so these can be used. You should remove webs outside with a cobweb duster on a routine basis, as the presence of the webs, even if the spiders are no longer alive, creates the impression with the customer that they still have spiders. On the inside webs should be removed with a vacuum to prevent smearing them on the wall. 
So, a variety of thoughts, and hopefully this is helpful. 

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Pest QuestionsOctober 30, 2012

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