I have an infestation of brown widow spiders in my pole barn! (Florida)

We moved onto our new Central Florida property in early May. On the property, about 20 feet from our house, we have an aluminum pole barn with sides and three large bay doors. Was being used previously for housing antique cars. Nothing was in it when we moved here, except the spiders. We should have gotten rid of the spiders before moving our belongings into the barn but we didn't because we didn't have the time and didn't know what to do about the spiders. The barn is completely infested with brown widow spiders--countless small males and dozens of giant females. Egg sacks everywhere. Now, many of my boxes of beautiful books are covered in spider webs. I'll be honest--I'm also pretty scared to go in there because I can't set two feet inside without kicking webs! But I usually just clear the webs away and get what I need (our animal feed is stored in the barn, so I'm usually in there twice per day).

I'm trying to avoid potentially harmful/carcinogenic sprays and powders on this property, as much as possible anyway. My husband bought a fire gun that attaches to a propane tank (it's legit--he mostly uses it for starting coal for the grill) thinking he could burn the spiders out, but that proved to be completely impractical as about 99.99% of our things are totally flammable and the spiders go way up high in the barn anyway.

Are there any domesticated birds or other animals that eat brown widow spiders? Like...can I let my chickens in there, assuming there's nothing toxic/dangerous for them to eat besides the spiders? Would this even work?

Any other ideas on how to get these spiders out and make our barn safe for us to go inside? Thank you!

Black widows? With the red hourglass belly markings? Or are brown widows something I've not heard of?
If they are black widows, chickens LOVE THEM.
Make sure of what you have first.
And a bunch of wild birds, if you open a couple of high openings, would love to come in and eat too. Do you have high openings?

I learned something, I never knew there was a brown widow. I had heard of black widow and brown recluse.. these brown widows are real, and now I know about them.

Spiders only stick around in an area where there is food. So trying to discourage all bugs might thin out the spiders some. Not sure how DE might work. Is Borax natural?

From what the internet says, certain wasps like to eat them... though I'm not sure you would want to encourage a wasp nest in there either :)

I have an infestation of black widow spiders in my barn. I never heard of brown widow spider though I assume those are just as bad.

I would try using insecticidal vinegar to see if that will kill them.

I have a troublesome one by the backdoor when I hang out laundry.

I have used vinegar on it before.

We had the same issue when we moved to our property. We moved our rv into the barn in April. We spent all summer dealing with very large black widows, brown widows, and brown recluses.

We kept things swept up and we were in and out of the barn all summer and I did a real good late fall clean up and moved everything around.

The next spring and summer, we had very few issues.

If you use the barn (in and out), move things and sweep up often, break the cobwebs, etc. things will be much improved next year. Those types of spiders do not like to be repeatedly disturbed, at least that has been our experience.

Do wolf spiders hunt other spiders like these?

craig howard wrote: Do wolf spiders hunt other spiders like these?

Maybe, but wolf spiders aren't much bigger than the large female brown widow spiders, so not sure.

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Can't really encourage other bugs to eat them or discourage other bugs as a food source...it's a pole barn, so it's always somewhat open to the elements (the bay doors never close all the way). I will try leaving the doors wide open during the day so birds might come in and eat them. And I will tackle webs with the broom, though I admit to being kind of scared!

As soon as my juvenile chickens are big enough, I'm going to let them in the barn and see what happens. Hopefully they will eat them all up! :)

Thank you everyone!

Josh Hoffman wrote:If you use the barn (in and out), move things and sweep up often, break the cobwebs, etc. things will be much improved next year. Those types of spiders do not like to be repeatedly disturbed, at least that has been our experience.

Here we have brown recluses, in ridiculous numbers, and this is always the case.
House geckos eat them happily, but the best thing you can do is to leave those bay doors open, move everything around, broom or hose everything down, expose the whole mess to as much light as possible. they don't want to be disturbed. Every so often I need to do something in our attic, which is totally infested, I cover up as if I were going to mess with a beehive so there is no chance of getting bitten, and I move EVERYTHING around. it helps a lot.

Tereza Okava wrote: leave those bay doors open, .... expose the whole mess to as much light as possible.

Great point about getting the sunlight in there if possible.