Insect hotels: money making or animal welfare?

Created: 05/23/2022, 02:00 p.m

By: Ines Alms

How useful are insect hotels really?

Many of the nesting aids that can be bought are not species-appropriate for wild bees and other beneficial insects, but rather useless.

Obernkirchen - A nice idea: Since humans limit the natural habitat of insects with concrete facades and gardens that are not natural, they offer them decorative nesting accommodation as a substitute.

Unfortunately, the insect houses offered in hardware stores or discounters are often lucrative for the sellers, but useless for wild bees and Co.

Insect hotels: money making or animal welfare?

Insect hotels are artificially created nesting aids.

(Iconic image) © Future Image/Imago

It's true: Wild bees and other insects are finding it increasingly difficult to survive due to a lack of food and nesting opportunities.

However, there are several ways to help protect insects in the garden, including insect hotels: they are useful for animal welfare and the preservation of biodiversity.

As the Bund Naturschutz ("NABU") explains, however, many of the nesting aids that can be bought are useless: unsuitable materials and construction methods are even harmful for the beneficial insects in the worst case.

You then threw the invested money out the window.

When buying or building yourself, you should therefore avoid the following construction methods:

• Glass tube for observing the insects inside: Glass is impermeable to water vapor, the wild bee brood can be attacked by fungi and die.

• So-called "willow rod clay walls" for burrowing bee species are useless: the clay material is almost always far too hard.

• Horizontal bundles of pithy stems are not species-appropriate: In nature, the animals prefer free-standing, more vertical structures.

  An alternative idea: You could attach cut blackberries or perennial stalks to the fence.

• Perforated and hollow bricks are used very often - but not colonized by wild bees!

  Better are interlocking tiles, whose holes the bees like to visit.

• Fresh, unseasoned wood is unfavorable.

  If the holes are placed too close together, cracks appear that wild bees avoid.

  Borings in the longitudinal wood are good, instead of in the end grain of tree sheaths.

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Piles of brushwood provide a habitat for ladybugs

According to the State Association for Bird Protection in Bavaria e.

V. (“LBV”), fillers such as straw, spruce cones, wood shavings or wood chips are largely useless for insects.

Piles of dead wood or brushwood in the garden are much more suitable for ladybirds, lacewings and other insects.

If you don't mind the effort, you can build the insect hotel yourself for the beneficial insects.

Is that too complicated for you?

For example, bees are also happy about insect-friendly plants on the balcony or in the garden.