This very popular blog post has been refreshed and updated for Spring 2024 (and thereafter).

Photo caption: A legion _{(not an army, but part thereof!)} of sugar ants committed mass suicide in my bottle of honey. In honour of those that might resurrect – I can see some of them will – I pooled it in the sink and gave them a chance to extract themselves (and several did). A few less foolhardy brothers and sisters are supping from the edges.

It’s spring again— and people don’t know what to make of the teeny-tiny ants that march indoors like school children on spring and summer days (when they should be outside!). They can’t be mistaken for carpenter ants. But, unfortunately for them and all the other ant species that aren’t carpenter ants, all searches end up on results about killing them. As if they were as dangerous as carpenter ants. Carpenter ants won’t hurt you, but their infestations are dangerous to your house – they devour wood.  They’re the only ones you need to be vigilant about. (OK, maybe fire ants too, but usually they’re outdoors, minding their own business).

Common talk, mass media, and the extermination industry has effectively enabled people to think that insects are disgusting and undesirable. This is just flat-out wrong. Bugs aren’t your enemy. All it takes to realize that, is to observe them objectively, doing nothing but watch—and if that isn’t enough, it always helps to do a little research.

Of course, when you try to do some research, you have to get past the “get rid of” them websites. The truth takes lot more digging. So that’s what this blog post is about.

So, those teeny-tiny ants you see in spring, visiting your plants, maybe visiting the fruit on your kitchen counter? The name of this kind of ant is Tapinoma sessile. Here’s the path I took to research it some more:

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Sorry (not sorry) if you might be a tad arachnophobic, but here’s the thing: I was terrified of spiders as a kid all the way through to some point of being a grown-up. It was after being a grown-up. When I was 23 or 24, I made a boyfriend check and check again regarding the presence he’d reported of a giant wolf spider in the bathroom. “It was THIS BIG!”… and thankfully it got out of there before harm came to it. Whatever you feel as an arachnophobe, I have felt it too.

And what fixed that? Looking at spiders and learning about them, and having so very few actual bad experiences and spider bites. It’s like every bite when I was a child could have come from a black fly or mosquito (horse flies: the worst!), but just like I was the family scapegoat, I devolved scapegoating onto whatever spider was at hand. Poor things.

The start of this arc of moral development was house-painting as a teenager, when I painted the leg of a daddy long-legs (they escaped my hideous fear), and watched it carefully clean its leg off. That’s when I realized they have worries of their own. It was the dawn of my waking up.

So now, when I’m on the boat, I have a rule: leave the spiders alone or put them out on the dock. If you encounter one while on the water, then trap it for the trip, and release it at the end.

And in my house, I have a rule: All rooms can have a resident spider, but one per room. Except that I hardly enforce it. I’m really lazy about enforcing it for daddy long-legs, and just keep an eye out for the other, speedier kinds (the pale yellow house spider, unidentified, others). And yes, I have to dust for cobwebs a few times a year.

I always put these guys outdoors simply because I think they’ll have an easier time hunting:

I tend to leave the screen off my kitchen and bathroom windows, so occasionally, I get a resident window-sill spider. These are speedy little predators who are very shy around people. Mostly. They tend to be more outgoing at night.

If the spider count in a location is too much, I move the spider elsewhere. Usually outdoors if the weather is ok, but in winter, I move them to the garage or the cold cellar.

Windowsill Sentinel spiders

Back in 2012 I started this blog post about my Kitchen Spider who, of course, I named Charlotte. Here she is, in the kind of photograph I had of that time:

Charlotte’s web had a collection of prey (visible), but also its previous moult exoskeleton (out of frame). I was really quite surprised how small she was when she started out — she was a very tiny spider. She found a good home there.

You’ll see that there’s greater clarity in a circle around the spider. This is the funnel of the web. Charlotte was a very subdued presence on the window sill, hanging out at the mouth of her cave but retreating whenever I startled her. When she was bold enough to come out of her cave, her leg span greater than a 25¢ piece. 

Soon, after more than a week without prey, her web wound around the frame of the window and various objects, and she even got off the window sill and wrapped a new web around the — I kid you not — handle of the kitchen faucet. I’m telling you this because many years hence, another kitchen spider did the same thing!

The first morning I just removed the web, but on the second morning, I felt a little sorry for her because the energy expenditure to do that work must mean she was hungry. I left the web intact, and just handled the faucet when I needed to use it. But eventually, the web tore off. So she moved her web over to the left corner of the window, which was a better spot for her.  

Here’s a gallery of the Kitchen Sentinel spider:

And upstairs, this year, I had a gregarious spider who even allowed a friend of the same type to hang out for a couple of days (I had to rescue it out of the bath and put it out the window, though). We’ll begin and end this gallery with the fabulous expanse of its web.

This kind of spider is called a Barn funnel spider in North America and a Domestic house spider in Europe; they look much scarier than they actually are – they are shy, opt to flee, and if they bite, they don’t even break the skin. So I still get the squeamish “don’t touch me!” feeling when I get close to one, but knowing these things about them I try to leave them in peace and not disturb them. For example, in the garden, I have to watch the plants for the funnel webs they create between plant leaves and other objects.

This lucky spider, here, is one that set up shop on my potting table. It even managed to drown itself in the sink during a rain. I removed it, placed its body back in the funnel web, and two days later, it was back as if nothing ever happened.

The orb-weaver spider

These guys are my second-favourite. In September until the frost comes, I won’t cross any area they’ve cordoned off with one of their webs. Including the patio door, which means I have to go downstairs to go out the back door.

The orb-weaver typically weaves a web between plants in meadows. Because it’s so energetically costly to weave a web, I’ve noticed that if one gets torn down by Big Clumsy (me, another animal, a bird), the spider will rebuild it with a zig-zag pattern. They will also consume their web and built it anew overnight, if it’s not fresh enough. I read once on the BBC website about bird-safe glass inspired by orb-weaver webs: apparently the silk contains proteins that show up in UV light so that birds don’t fly through in pursuit of insects.

And I even found a gravid spider hiding in the curl of a sunflower plant, in the autumn:

My favourite: jumping spiders!

On Jim McCormack’s  birding blog, the post “Jumping spider!” jumped right out at me. (He always matches the enthusiasm nature calls for.) “Cute” is definitely the word I apply to jumping spiders. They’re tiny, and curious, and I just like them. Here’s a great macro picture of a little guy in side-eye “you lookin‘ at me?” mode.

Check out this super-cute (even if old) video of a curious jumping spider!

These spiders are everywhere, perfectly harmless, and at times perfectly helpless. I accidentally killed one while cleaning the bay window shelf, and I felt so, so bad. Now I will always be more attentive than I was that day, as that’s one place they could make a permanent home. Provided they’re safe from Big Clumsy.

This summer, I went to Italy for almost four weeks. Oh man, it was freakin hot there, like 40ºC every day, so I mostly stuck to the coasts. After five days of roasting in Rome and a day in Napoli, I took the overnight ferry to Sicily, and then I travelled around by regional train. This brought me around to Catania, from which I took a day trip to Mt. Etna, an active volcano.

I didn’t book a tour, but took the early-morning bus from the train station to the foot of the mountain, where you had the choice of hiking or taking the funicular in either (or both) directions. A tour at the top was mandatory. I chose to take the funicular up, and then hike back down.

A mountain rescue

An interesting thing happened while we were at the top. One of the women I was with noticed a bumblebee lying on one of the volcanic rocks. It was cold, so cold that my shorts and shawl seemed like an unwise choice (though thankfully I didn’t suffer for it). The bees that try to fly over Mt. Etna could succumb to the sulfide gas that the volcano emits in cloudy little puffs. Or it could be the long flight up, and the terrible atmospheric cold. And then there’s a complete lack of available fuel once you’re out of the foothills. In any case, there was a bumblebee on the ground, and it needed help.

So I swooped in with what I had on hand: a dessert container, a napkin, the pit of a plum (for hydration and fructose), and water. I bundled the poor creature into the napkin and into the container, adding a little water to make it damp, if that’s what it needed. Then, as we were done the tour, we took the bus back down to the top of the funicular.

Once there, we were guided into the gift shop, where we were fortunate to have samples of Italian honey on offer. I took a sample stick, and went to sit outside on the terrasse to give the bee some sustenance. And the creature, who I must say seemed unimpressed with its imprisonment, and yet unable to protest, was quite hungry for the honey on offer. I sat there with it for about 45 minutes, even getting seconds from the honey-sample girl (who ironically was allergic to bees and so panicked at the sight of this one. Italians, they’re so dramatic).

Hiking with a passenger

The morning having thus passed pleasantly, it was time to take the hike back down the hill. We had plenty of time, but there was more to explore. So I set off down the hill holding the container in my hand with its lid ajar. The little creature didn’t want to be sequestered. It carefully climbed out and explored my available hand. And so I, now with a passenger to take care of, had the brilliant idea of taking the honey-sample stick and inserting it into my watch band. That way the bee would have a good place to perch on the walk down the hill.

Eventually we made it to the bottom and I visited the calderas around the visitor centre. It was there – it had been a couple of hours now, and the descent saw an increase in ambient temperature – that the bumblebee thought it might be time to test its wings. I crouched down behind a boulder, while it walked around my arm, buzzing its wings, until it took off. It flew in circles around me, landing on my lunch bag and on me a few times, and then it returned to the napkin “housing complex” I’d assembled for it. I could tell it was still hungry, and wanted to rest a while more.

So I continued carrying it with me through landscapes like these.

A post-hike meal, and time to relax

Again, to our great fortune, a honey kiosk was parked on the road back to the funicular building. I showed the bee to the attendant and asked for another honey sample for it, and he graciously complied. I was getting hungry myself, so I was going to have to find an outdoor place to dine.

Back at the centre, it took some quick work to get in to use the bathroom and line up at the cafeteria for my own meal (at least there was no actual line). I made haste to return. Little Bee cooperated in this endeavour by attending to its honey sample. I’d used the contents of my bag as obstructions on the table, and put the bee under a napkin tent for safety and privacy. My pasta with funghi was not very palatable, which was too bad, but fuel is fuel… 

So I sat back and relaxed and waited for the bee to make its full recovery. The charming thing is, the bee was interested in exploring me, walking up my arm to explore my shirt. And for the better part of an hour, it seemed to really prefer settling down to rest over my heart. It was like I was wearing a brooch of a very large bumblebee.

Time to depart

When the hour was up, I became a little anxious that my new friend was good enough to go. We were meeting the bus at 4 o’clock, and I didn’t want to take the bee on back to Catania, probably 50 kilometers away. I also didn’t want to just deposit it somewhere in the wild and run away. I didn’t know what to do! So I took it for another walk, and told it I was going to have to leave very soon, and I hoped that it felt good enough to fly away home. “You have to go, now, and so do I!”

That’s when the bee started flying its test flights around me again. It flew around, then landed on me a few times… and then it landed on my ankle and tried to crawl down into my shoe (bumblebees sleep in burrows in the ground). In a bit of a panic about that, I squatted down – “Hey, git outta there–”  

And maybe I scared it with that sudden move, because that’s what it did. It flew away before I even saw in which direction it went.

So that was a very special day, spent in the company of a very large bumblebee. I learned that not only do they know when you’re helping them, they definitely have the faculties of recognition and trust.

I hope that this became a story in the bumblebee culture of a time when one of them flew too high on a too-cold day over a big volcano, and fell to earth, only for a giantess to rescue it and give it honey and carry it back down to where it would find familiar plants and landscapes.

Then again, the bees have perhaps been telling each other this story for thousands of years. It’s conceivable that some of the ancients did the same sort of thing, when they had a reason to go walking on Mt. Etna.