Don't vacuum spiders

[snopes]

Comment: I've heard several times that using a vacuum cleaner to suck up
bugs (mostly spiders in MY case!) is ineffective as it doesn't kill the
bugs. Rumor has it that they survive the trip through the vacuum hose &
live on in the vacuum bag, reproducing, only to come crawling out en masse
when you least expect them. True or false? Am I back to messy, smelly,
staining sprays?????

[Lainie]

Note to self: Just in case, get J to empty the shopvac.

[Chloe]

Legend has it my grandmother once vacuumed up a swarm of bees, which later escaped in the middle of the night.

I use a small handvac on a setting low enough to have the ants and flies survive, then take them outside.

[Lainie]

Which explains all the dizzy, reeling flies and ants outside Chloe's house.

[Lachrymose]

Oh, Anty Em!

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

I suspect the spiders I vacuum up (which I don't deliberately do) suffocate in all the dust in my vacuum bag. Which is to say that I don't change the bag often enough...

Seaboe

[Twankydillo]

I don't understand why you'd have to vacuum or use sprays. Spiders are good! Yes, some people are scared of them, I sympathise as I have a phobia of moths, but you can deal with your phobia without killing, and especially spiders as they're good to have in your house and garden if you dislike having flies. Plus, you're deluded yourself if you think you can kill them all in your house, you really can't!

[Lainie]

Last weekend I spent at least an hour removing years, maybe decades, worth of webs -- cobwebs and spiderwebs -- from one part of my mother's basement. Along the walls, in the corners, along and between the exposed joists, pipes and ductwork.

I didn't see any living spiders (I think I saw the remains of some of their meals, or possibly their eggs), but if I had, I would have vacuumed them up, too. I don't normally kill spiders, but doing otherwise just wouldn't have been practical. For one thing, the basement's gone uncleaned so long (it just wasn't a priority those years Mom wasn't well) that I practically have to decon every time I come upstairs.

[Chloe]

Originally Posted by Twankydillo

I don't understand why you'd have to vacuum or use sprays. Spiders are good! Yes, some people are scared of them, I sympathise as I have a phobia of moths, but you can deal with your phobia without killing, and especially spiders as they're good to have in your house and garden if you dislike having flies. Plus, you're deluded yourself if you think you can kill them all in your house, you really can't!

Some spiders here can be pretty nasty. I'm not good at identifying them, so all but the tinies get scooped up and put outside. SO usually yells for me, as he knows I'll be mad if he kills them. I know I've had brown recluses in the house, and once I found a black widow in the bath. I put her outside but she was a bit stunned and I think a bird might have eaten her.

[GenYus234]

So how do you take care of a dusty spider? Mop it? Swiffer?

[DawnStorm]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

So how do you take care of a dusty spider? Mop it? Swiffer?

I use one of those canned air thingees myself.

[Der Induktionator]

Using a vacuum to suck up spiders is cruel, I believe they do far more good eating the other insects. In a rare case if you have a venomous one, let someone relocate it for you, but otherwise clean up their old webs once in a while and let them be.

Flies, no love, but they give me practice catching them with my bare hands (Just wash them in the sink after, big deal.

Yellowjackets get the hand-held Dyson vacuum. The noise often is enough to chase them away. A piece of plastic wrap keeps them from escaping. Last summer we dispatched a whole nest with the big dyson, just pointed the nozzle (Fully extended!) near their nest and let it run for a few minutes.

[Onyx_TKD]

Originally Posted by Der Induktionator

Using a vacuum to suck up spiders is cruel, I believe they do far more good eating the other insects. In a rare case if you have a venomous one, let someone relocate it for you, but otherwise clean up their old webs once in a while and let them be.

Flies, no love, but they give me practice catching them with my bare hands (Just wash them in the sink after, big deal.

Yellowjackets get the hand-held Dyson vacuum. The noise often is enough to chase them away. A piece of plastic wrap keeps them from escaping. Last summer we dispatched a whole nest with the big dyson, just pointed the nozzle (Fully extended!) near their nest and let it run for a few minutes.

This seems very inconsistent to me. If one shouldn't vacuum up spiders on the grounds that it's cruel, then why is vacuuming yellowjackets ok? Whether the critter is useful to humans or not doesn't change whether killing them in a certain way is cruel.

[GenYus234]

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

I use one of those canned air thingees myself.

Now I'm picturing a spider going flying across the room.

"I can see my house from heeeeeeereee!"

[Cervus]

I know I posted in this thread last night. Did I have another one of those disappearing posts?

My post pointed out that if you have an infestation of something like fleas or ticks, it's best to empty the vacuum immediately. They won't all get killed in the vacuum, and it only takes a few to re-infest your house.

Also I nitpicked that spiders aren't bugs, they're arachnids. And I wondered why people would suck them up, as they provide a valuable service.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Originally Posted by Onyx_TKD

This seems very inconsistent to me. If one shouldn't vacuum up spiders on the grounds that it's cruel, then why is vacuuming yellowjackets ok? Whether the critter is useful to humans or not doesn't change whether killing them in a certain way is cruel.

Actually, vacuuming yellow jackets and wasps is how entomologists relocate the nests. As long as you're not vacuuming them into a bag it appears to do them little harm.

Personally, I leave spiders alone unless they're in the bath tub. I have a phobia so can't relocate them myself and there is no one else to do it. So spiders in the bath tub get washed down the drain.

Cruel? Maybe. I can't bring myself to get worked up about the pain a spider might potentially feel.

Seaboe

[NorthernLite]

Originally Posted by Der Induktionator

Flies, no love, but they give me practice catching them with my bare hands (Just wash them in the sink after, big deal.)

No big deal to you but I bet the flies don't like being washed in the sink.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by Cervus

And I wondered why people would suck them up, as they provide a valuable service.

People who are arachnophobic may not be able to handle leaving them alone or re-homing them.

I usually leave them alone unless arachnophobic DD is bothered by one, and then my first choice is to take it outside. But when I was de-webbing Mom's basement so that I could work down there without walking into/reaching through webs all the time, it wasn't feasible to distinguish between spidewebs and cobwebs. I don't recall seeing any spiders, but it's possible I vac'ed one or more.

[SatansHobbit]

Redbacks die! All others I let live.

[Embra]

Fortunately nobody in this house is phobic about spiders (and none of the ones we get are nasty) so even the big hairy house spiders are left to find a suitable crevice. Every now and then I hoover down the more extensive webs up by the ceiling, just so the house doesn't look like a set for a Hallowe'en special.

Bees, wasps and hornets are usually caught with a jar and paper, and released outside. I don't really like doing it because I'm a bit afraid of them flying into my face or hair, but I can usually manage it.