Linda Susan Wallace, of Sinks Grove, W.V., for her question:
ARE THE BLACK AND YELLOW GARDEN SPIDERS BENEFICIAL TO GARDENS?
A Greek legend tells the tale of a young girl named Arachne. It was said that she could spin fine threads and weave beautiful cloth. She was so proud of her skills that she challenged the goddess Athena to a spinning and weaving contest and won. Athena became so enraged at being surpassed by a mere mortal that she tore up the cloth and changed the young maiden into a spider. Poor Arachne was doomed to spend the rest of her life spinning, something spiders or arachnids do better than any other creature.
The pretty black and yellow, or black and orange, spiders that you saw in your garden during the summer and early fall months are no longer with us. \But you can bet that before they fell victim to the chill of winter they did their best to keep your garden free of many insect pests. As you may know, spiders are carnivorous meat¬eaters, and among their favorite foods are many of the freeloading insects that invade our prized plants.
Most all spiders can spin silk of one kind or another. Some of them use their silk to line underground burrows or make egg cases. The master spinners use their silk to spin webs to catch their prey, and the webs range greatly in size, shape and beauty.
Perhaps one of the champion spinners is the garden spider. Her web is generally two to three feet across, although occasionally an ambitious Miss will construct an even larger one. When she is finished with her spiraled orb, she affixes her signature a zigzag band of silk running vertically through the center. Each evening she repairs her web, but if the traffic has been too heavy and damaging she builds anew.
In the fall, as cold weather begins to set in, she searches for a place to lay her eggs. A roof of silken threads is spun in which she deposits some 500 golden eggs. Gently she pushes them together to form a neat pearl shaped ball. Now she spins winding strands of silk back and forth, until her golden treasure is almost hidden in a sturdy silken cocoon.
The garden spider makes only one egg case, but the effort leaves her weak and tired. As the cold of October creeps in she drops to the ground and dies. But in her egg case are hundreds of tiny eggs, and soon the spiderlings hatch and spend the winter in their snug, insulated shelter. Around May the first young garden spiders crawl through tiny openings in the egg case to embark on their journey through life. Their first order of business is to spread out into the wide world and find suitable places to spin their webs.
Many uninformed people consider every spider a deadly enemy. They go to great lengths to eliminate them at every turn. Actually, spiders play an important role in the balance of nature. They help rather than harm man by preying on insects that destroy crops and carry diseases.