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I've been living in my apartment for a year now, and noticed something lately. During spring and summer I have quite a lot of midges indoors, and even now there are some. But there are no spiders! So my question is a bit of the opposite of what all spider/house related articles are about: how do I get more spiders to my house?

Some info about my place: I live in a 40 year old apartment in Rotterdam, Netherlands on the second floor. It's always between 17 and 20°C, and the place is poorly isolated; plenty of cracks for visitors to crawl through. Also, I usually have a window open a bit. I have quite a lot of plants, and an aquarium, so I guess air humidity is relatively high. There is a large backyard with lots of weeds and some trees, however people use it for dumping old furniture so it is not a real garden (it's most likely the source of the midges).

Can I do something to stimulate spiders to come to my house?

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    $\begingroup$ I hoped I could find live spiders for sale on Amazon, but couldn't find any. But if you need 72,000 ladybugs they've got you covered. $\endgroup$ – user137 Dec 11 '14 at 23:51
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    $\begingroup$ I appreciate your effort! I recently bought 50 ladybug larvae at 25$, to deal with plant lice, but seems like that was pretty expensive, relatively... Next time I'll release 72,000 ladybugs indoors, that will surely make my house plant lice free. $\endgroup$ – Jasper Kennis Dec 12 '14 at 13:14
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Spiders are naturally attracted to areas where preys are abundant, insects are primary source of spider prey. So you must create proper environment for insects in your home, lights to attract nocturnal insects, flowers to attract butterflies and moths are attracted towards decaying vegetation(It may make your place smelly). Once insects are abundant then spiders are attracted towards these areas. Some parasitic wasps are predator to spiders like those belonging to Ichneumonidae, try to avoid these species. Also you can collect spider eggs and place it inside your home, so they will hatch out in your place.Some times you can see web full of spider nymphs, take it out and place it in your home.

Attracting spider to home can be achieved through buying some spider traps like poison free spider glue, which contains pheromones. Spiders are attracted to it and they will stick on them and eventually die, so you need to be careful and use the phenomenal effect of the spider trap to attract spiders or it will be dead and become useless.

The analysis revealed that the wasp spider pheromone is methylcitric acid trimethyl ester, a derivative of citric acid.

Some other techniques to attract spiders

An unspecified Cheiracanthium species is attracted to the smell of petroleum and has caused problems by weaving webs inside the canister vent of particular models of Mazda vehicles, resulting in blockages and build-up of pressure that could potentially cause fuel leakage from the fuel tank and an increased risk of fire. Mazda issued a voluntary recall of Mazda 6 models built between 2010-2012, to fit them with software which would alert drivers if problems were developing.

Reference

A spider that preys on the malaria-carrying mosquito is attracted to the odour of people's smelly socks, say scientists.

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Eugenol baited traps we found seven individuals of two species of Thomisidae. In contrast, with the control traps, no Thomisidae were caught . Since Thomisidae were caught only in traps baitedwith eugenol, whereas no crab spiders were attracted to control traps, we postulate that eugenol served as an attractant for these spiders.

Reference

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  • $\begingroup$ We had a tractor with a clogged fuel filter once because a spider somehow got inside it, so an attraction to gasoline might be more widespread than just that species. $\endgroup$ – user137 Dec 12 '14 at 15:14
  • $\begingroup$ These seem like great tricks. I think I'll try Eugenol first, smelly socks and petroleum don't seem like such attractive options to use indoors;) Done some research on Eugenol, Apparently there's quite a lot of it in clove buds and leaves. Will see if I can get myself a small clove tree. Also just lay some cloves around and get some oil from them. $\endgroup$ – Jasper Kennis Dec 15 '14 at 12:09
  • $\begingroup$ In addition, here's more details on growing a clove tree: gardendrum.com/2013/11/27/how-to-grow-cloves $\endgroup$ – Jasper Kennis Dec 15 '14 at 12:43

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