Insect hotel build – geht’s

Bees, bumblebees and wasps, butterflies and dragonflies are threatened in their existence. In addition to food crops, and you have a Shelter. We can help with so – called insect hotels, where we can order them for nesting and Winter grounds.

• Bees, wasps and Bumble bees, we offer tubes of 2.5 mm to 1 cm a Nistmöglichkeit.
• Beetles and earwigs love wool dry nests made of wood and straw. This should not be removed from the apiary so that the earwigs will eat the bee larvae.
• Insect hotels can be made of different materials to build. It is important that these are weather resistant, indoor not to get wet, and the holes are the right size for the animals.
• In addition to purchased materials, such as bamboo, you can collect your insect hotel-utensils in the garden and stems, hard wood and tree bark.
• An insect-house is only useful if you provide otherwise, also for insects of the garden and matching Nährpflanzen for larvae and Adults.

Table of contents

No useless buy ready-made products

But beware: insect hotels are a Hype, and every garden centre offers you today. The majority of these finished products is as a habitat for the insects, unsuitable: the holes in the wood are too small, too short to be drilled, or find it in the materials with which the animals can’t do anything.

Different Needs

The ecological niches of wild bees and bumblebees are very different. Sand bees dig their nests in Sand, some bumblebees dig in the ground. Other use the corridors in the dead wood, the beetle into feeding, some of the nest piles, in tree holes or in Wood. Others, again, inhabit rock crevices or cracks in the Walls. Then which inhabit the hollow stems of plants.

Today, sandy areas will disappear under the shopping center, in the place of old shed in the municipality are single family homes and decaying trees removed, orchards and meadows will be lost, dry stone walls are removed.

Food and shelter

An insect hotel in the manicured lawn is as useful as an apartment with an empty fridge and without the opportunity to get something to eat. Place for insects to shelter a wild flower meadow, is to plant a natural hedge with hazel, hawthorn, sallow, meadowsweet, blackthorn and cornelian cherry.

Nesting places for various species

We know the needs of the individual species, we can easily create nesting places. For this, we bind to, for example, blades of grass, along the Reeds, or to fill the holes of a hollow brick with stalks and hang everything on a sun spot. The place should be dry, South-facing and wind.

To avoid errors

Before you begin, be sure the most common error in the construction of an insect hotel to avoid:

• The stem nodes in stem, for example, in the front part, are not able to crawl the animals through.
• Ytong-stones, to act like a sponge and suck water. The insects are not able to tolerate the wetness.
• Insects take no stems, the platt, fraying or splinters.
• For wild bees, pine cones, straw or bark is of no significance. This is a pull instead earwigs.
• You want to give the two groups a home, disconnect the nests with cones, straw, or bark of the Shelters for wild bees. Otherwise, the earwigs eat the nectar memory is empty.
• Clay colonizing bees digging their holes. Therefore, the clay must not be too hard. You waive insect hotels with pre-drilled holes in the clay.
• The end of stems, and tubes should be closed. Both sides are open, whether in the case of perennials, not stems, bamboo tubes or reeds, the insects.
• Do not drill larger than 1 cm in diameter. There are no insects in such Oversize here, would accept the holes.
• You don’t drill parallel to the wood fibers. The fibers can obstruct the animals path.
• You can choose soft wood instead of hard wood.
• Gypsum concrete is a building material unsuitable. He takes water, and that kills the insects.

Insects and garden benefit

An insect hotel supports:

• Wild bees: they pollinate fruits and vegetables
• Wild Bumble bees: Like bees they pollinate garden plants.
• Ladybug: The and their larvae eat aphids.
• Lacewings: the larvae of Which eat aphids.
• Beetles: they eat slugs, and Colorado potato beetle.

Lacewings, earwigs, and their larvae are also important food for toads, lizards and birds – so for natural enemies of the snails, the wegraspeln the salad.

How to build your own insect hotels

An insect shelter is best in the shade, with the Openings to the South, and to the free access, not in the undergrowth. Full shade is unsuitable, the larvae need the heat of the sun to develop. It may not be to the North-West exposed, because otherwise moisture gets into the dwellings. Fungi can spread, and the animals die.

The shelter is the best increased, then predators can’t reach it easily. Also, it is on the floor mostly too shady. The best insect grazing is available in the area, i.e. flowers or aphids infested plants. Also a water point on site is required. It is better to illuminate the space around the insect hotel in the Dark. A wire mesh keeps out birds.

When we set up the Hotel?

Insect hotels, we can set up the whole year, because they serve not only to breed but also as a winter quarters. But it is better, from the spring to the autumn offer, because the insects are active in the Winter. Place the Housing in a fixed position and leave it there.

Warning: do not Come to the idea of the insects “do something good” to want and the shelter in the Winter to Warm. With increasing temperatures, the larvae hatch, and this upsets the natural rhythm.

What we fill the house?

Different insects have different needs, therefore, we use in each of the areas of the house, various materials for the insect hotel.

These include:

• Reed
• The bamboo tubes. Bamboo has solid separating walls in the stems, so that we receive a completed tube.
• Pflanzenstängel (falling in Winter and spring in the case of dead shrubs abundant).
• Nisthölzer
• Wood wool
• Bricks
• Leaves
• Snails houses
• Branches, the branches (for example, elderberry, dog rose, cherry, willow)
• Bark

Reeds, bamboo, and stalks can easily be processed. The plant stems should have a 2.5 mm to 1 cm in diameter, and at the end be completed. The Mark should be removed with a stick or screwdriver.

We press the approximately 10 cm long stems in a tin can, from which it can not fall out, and fix them.

For Nisthölzer we use hard wood such as oak or beech, and drilling holes from 2.5 mm to 1 cm. That’s the equivalent of the courses, the visiting wild bees in deadwood. We drill from the longitudinal side, of the beetle into feeding.

The wood by drilling, we never quite, a speed of approximately 10 cm is optimal, so we need to have thick pieces of wood. Optimally holes obliquely from above – then no water runs into it. The holes do not overlap.

Depending on the size of the holes we attract different bees:

• The Horned Mason bee , preferably 8 mm, the Red 7 mm, the steel blue is only 4-5 mm.
• The scissors bees already with 3 mm.
• Mask of bees and wasps, sometimes with a 2.5 mm, some species need but 5 mm.

Suitable ash, alder, beech and oak are well-disposed and transverse to the fiber direction of the drilled so that no cracks arise.

Bricks

In insects hotels Strand interlocking tiles are particularly suitable. These bees are small holes in the right size for Wild.

Snails houses

Rare wild bees nest in Snail shells. That is not what we take but the great houses of the vineyard – or even agate snails, but the medium of belts or schnirkel snow cover.

Straw

Straw is suitable for earwigs and beetles. A straw box we create, but separately and at a distance to the bee house. Earwigs will eat the larvae of the bees, and your shelter should have a safety distance. Earwig shelters should you create in the vicinity of aphids, in the vicinity of wild bees ‘ houses. You can fill old tonblumen pots with straw and head into the garden to hang.

Bamboo cottage

For a bee nisthilfe from bamboo we cut the bamboo tube in eight-centimeter-long pieces and remove split ends and cracks from the front Opening. The length of the tube should be at least eight inches, are in the piece of node are we drilling these. We glue the pieces with a tile adhesive on the back. To do this, we fill a two-inch-thick layer of the glue in the wood house, and pressing the bamboo pieces into it.

For a simple home, we take four in an eight-centimeter-long pieces of wood, the width of which is determined according to the number of bamboo tubes. They should all fit, but leave no gaps. The back measure accordingly. Since the walls are not used to Nest, you must be so stable that the house Wind and weather. The clamping plates.

Stem hotel

We can cut in the autumn, a number of stems from a half a Meter in length, for example, elderberry, BlackBerry, butterfly, lilac, or wild rose, and over the Winter drying. In March, we get them in the garden and attach obliquely to trees, fences or walls. By the way: If you leave the stems of your perennials, you can achieve the same effect.

The Example Of Nature

Insects a pull in nature, in the upright stems of marrow-containing plants. Therefore, you should make your stems upright instead of horizontally as, alas, in most commercially available insect hotels.

As a General rule: If you can your garden “clinically” purely to keep, so, wild carrot and stinging nettle pulling, on which the caterpillars of their food, wild flowers as “weeds”, and woody debris to the recycling center, uses an insect shelter, nothing.

To create a dry stone wall, surround your flower beds with old tree Branches and pieces of Bark, a stone, a heap of, keep a wild corner where you don’t mow or rake. Then you already have most of what characterizes an insect hotel. You build this so in addition to the structure of an insect-friendly garden – and not instead of this.

Nesting site for sand bees

For sand bees, you need a sandy area. For this they carry the earth in approximately 2 x 2 m and about 50 cm deep and then fill Humus, gravel and Sand. The sand proportion should be 2/3. The soil should be loose and at the same time stable. He is too close, can drill the bees are no gears. He is too loose, it falls off the gears. You can prevent the sand rounded form surface by the body frame with boards. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)