If it feels like every porch light in your neighborhood grew a web this month, nothing has gone wrong with your house. Fall is when the spiders that have been living on your property all year finally get big enough to notice, and Bourbonnais gives them a lot of reasons to stay.
Spiders are not moving in because it got cold
The common assumption is that falling temperatures drive spiders toward the house. That is mostly backwards. The spiders around your foundation hatched there in spring and have been working your siding since May at a size nobody pays attention to.
Two things change in September and October. The spiders reach full size, so a web that was invisible in June now stretches across the corner of your garage door. And the males stop sitting in one spot, because mating season sends them wandering across walls, driveways and window frames looking for females. More movement plus more size equals the impression of an invasion that never actually happened.
The short version
Fall spider activity in Bourbonnais comes from mature spiders becoming visible and males traveling to find mates, not from spiders fleeing the cold. The number on your property tracks the number of insects your property feeds. Cut the insects and the lighting that attracts them, clear the webs, and the population drops on its own.
Why Bourbonnais yards hold more than most
The Kankakee River runs along the south edge of town, and the whole corridor through Perry Farm and the Bourbonnais Creek area stays humid well into October. Humidity holds insect populations longer than dry open ground does, and spiders stay wherever the food is.
Add the way local neighborhoods are built. The older streets near Olivet have mature trees, deep eaves and covered porches. The newer subdivisions on the north and west sides have open lots that back up to fields, which is a straight path for the flying insects that come in at dusk. Either way, your porch light is the brightest thing for a hundred feet and it works like a dinner bell.
That is the whole cycle. The light pulls in moths, midges and gnats. The spiders build where the food gathers. You get webs across the entryway you use every day while the back corner of the house stays clean.
What you are actually looking at
Most of what shows up around Kankakee County homes in fall falls into a few groups.
- Orb weavers. The classic wheel shaped web across a doorway or between porch posts, often rebuilt overnight. These get large and obvious in September, which is why people think they appeared out of nowhere.
- Grass and funnel weavers. Flat sheet webs with a tunnel at the back, usually in shrubs, along foundations and across low ground cover. Obvious on a dewy morning.
- Cellar spiders. Long thin legs, loose tangled webs, basements and garage ceilings. They are the ones hanging in the corner above the water heater.
- Wolf spiders. No web at all. They hunt on the ground, which is why one turns up on the garage floor and scares somebody half to death. Fast, harmless and more afraid of you.
Worth knowing for this part of Illinois: brown recluse are established in central and southern Illinois and are uncommon this far north, and black widows are rare in Kankakee County. Almost every spider on a Bourbonnais porch in October is harmless to people. That does not make them pleasant to walk through, but it does mean you are dealing with a nuisance problem rather than a safety problem. If something bites you and you have a reaction beyond a normal welt, call a doctor rather than trying to identify the spider yourself.
Where they set up on a house
Spiders want two things: steady food traffic and a spot nobody disturbs. That combination lands them in the same places on nearly every property we service.
- Eaves, soffits and the corners under roof overhangs
- Around every exterior light fixture, front and back
- Window frames, shutters and the upper corners of door frames
- Deck framing, railings and the underside of stairs
- Garage door tracks, the corners of the overhead door and anything stored along the wall
- Shrubs planted tight to the foundation and the mulch line underneath
- Sheds, playsets and anything sitting against the back fence
What actually reduces the population
Spiders follow their food. Every step below either removes the food, removes the shelter or removes the web, and together they do far more than knocking down one web with a broom.
- Switch exterior bulbs to warm or amber LED. Flying insects are drawn to blue and ultraviolet wavelengths. Warmer light pulls in fewer bugs, which means fewer spiders setting up nearby. This one change does more than people expect.
- Clear the webs and keep clearing them. Pull webs and egg sacs off eaves, fixtures and corners. A single pass helps for a week. A routine is what moves the number.
- Pull shrubs and branches off the siding. Anything touching the house is a bridge. Six inches of clearance takes away the easy route.
- Fix the gaps. Worn door sweeps, torn screens, unsealed gaps around hose bibs and dryer vents. Spiders use the same openings every other insect uses.
- Clean up the ground along the foundation. Leaf litter, stacked firewood, piled mulch and lumber against the wall all hold moisture and the insects that come with it.
- Organize the garage and the basement. Cardboard stacked against a wall for three years is undisturbed shelter. Plastic bins off the floor are not.
- Vacuum what you find inside. Webs, egg sacs, the works. Empty the canister outside when you are done.
Why dewebbing has to repeat
Treating over an existing web wastes the product. The web shields the surface underneath, so the treatment never reaches the material the spider is actually walking on. That is why our exterior visits pull the webbing down first and treat second, in that order, every time.
The other half is that any product on an outside surface breaks down. Sun degrades it and rain moves it. A treatment applied in April is doing very little by the time the September webs go up, which is the reason a single visit reads as a great result for six weeks and a disappointment by fall. Coverage that holds is coverage that gets renewed each season.
When it is worth calling someone
A web across the porch in October is normal. Clearing the same three corners every weekend is a different situation, and so is finding webs in the same interior spots month after month, because that usually points at a steady insect supply somewhere on the property rather than at the spiders themselves.
EKKO Home Pest Protection handles exactly this. Spider web removal from accessible areas is part of every visit, along with the exterior perimeter treatment that goes after the insects spiders are eating. The program runs $49 per month with a one time initial service of $99 to $199 based on the size of the home and what is currently active, and the four seasonal visits are timed so the fall round lands when the webs do.
Our work is exterior only. If spiders or anything else are established inside walls or living space, that calls for an interior company and we will tell you so rather than sell you an outside service that misses the problem.
Clear the webs before the holidays
EKKO Lawns handles exterior pest control across Bourbonnais, Bradley, Kankakee, Manteno and the rest of the county. Dewebbing, perimeter treatment, wasp nests and entry points, all on one visit.
Questions we get about fall spiders
They have been on the property since spring. By September they have reached full size and the males are traveling to find mates, so both the spiders and their webs become easy to see.
Nearly all of them are harmless. Brown recluse are uncommon this far north in Illinois and black widows are rare in Kankakee County. Avoid handling any spider you cannot identify, and see a doctor if a bite reacts beyond a normal welt.
It helps when you keep at it. Removing webs and egg sacs takes away the established setup and the next generation. One pass buys a week, a routine lowers the population.
Yes, more than most people expect. Flying insects are drawn to blue and ultraviolet wavelengths, so a warm or amber bulb brings fewer bugs to the entryway and gives spiders less reason to build there.
No. We are exterior only, which covers dewebbing, the foundation perimeter, eaves, nests and entry points. Anything established inside living space needs an interior company.
Home Pest Protection runs $49 per month with a one time initial service of $99 to $199 depending on the size of the home and the activity present. Dewebbing is included in every seasonal visit.
More on the services mentioned here: exterior pest control, perimeter pest control and the towns on our route in Kankakee County.
