News
Do conkers keep spiders away?
Spiders are common visitors to homes during the autumn. This is the time of year when male house spiders start searching for female spiders. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to prove that scattering conkers around your living room will keep them away, its simply an old wives tale.
The story goes that conkers contain a chemical that repels spiders. Think about it, why would horse chestnut trees produce spider repelling chemicals. If anything you would think that if they could they would want to produce spider attracting chemicals, so the spiders would keep the tree free from insect pests.
In 2010, the pupils of Roselyon Primary School won a prize from the RSC for their informal study showing that spiders were not bothered in the slightest by conkers.
Another tale is that spraying a spiders web with peppermint will cause them to jump out of the nearest window. Unfortunately spraying anything that isn’t water on a spider web will only create more webs as they will abandon the first one and build another one somewhere else.
If you absolutely can't bare the thought of sharing your home with a couple of spiders the best way to deal with them is to just hoover them up. Unfortunately it will only be a matter of time before Incy Wincy and his friends start to recolonise your sofa, regardless of how many conkers you decide to scatter underneath it.