Black Widow Info help!

[mrveloria]

Need help please!
Finally got a black widow Friday and she layed an egg sac two days later. How long will I get to see her live before she dies after laying her egg sac? Would love to keep her. Any info and support is much appreciated!

Thank you,
Sid

 

[chanda]

I've had black widows (Latrodectus hesperus) live for a year or more after laying an egg sac - and lay up to seven or eight additional egg sacs, most of which were also fertile! They retain sperm following mating, so they can easily fertilize multiple sacs after even a single mating. If she was wild-caught as an adult, there's a good chance that she has mated and the sac is fertile.

Be prepared for the possibility of hundreds of itty-bitty baby black widows hatching out - and make sure they are in an escape-proof enclosure, so you don't end up with black widows all over your house! They can easily slip through screen tops or ventilation holes or even the gaps around hinged doors. What I use for my widows are those "bug lids" they sell for fruit fly cultures, that have just the tiniest of pinholes - or the fabric mesh over the ventilation holes - so nothing can get out.

 

[NYAN]

I have the females from my first generation of babies still. I think they laid sacs over a year ago, and are around 2 years old.

 

[The Snark]

They need very little ventilation. You could keep whatever the spider and egg sacs are in in a 1 ft x 1 ft x 1ft container that is almost hermetically sealed. The plan is to confine the slings to a small area so they predate each other and get a good leg up on life.

(HSU bio student once kept a Geo hermetically sealed in a baby food jar and never fed it. It survived for about 1 1/2 month. I was partly at fault there.)