Build an insect hotel - PEP BB animal.sand.insect

These are in-progress photos of my insect hotel!





These are a couple more progress pictures of my insect hotel construction.





I made a couple holders on the sides, so that I can hang the insect hotel up.



This is my finished insect hotel. The top layer is for solitary bees; the middle layer is for ladybugs, and the bottom layer is for grass-cutter wasps. That's what I am hoping will inhabit the hotel I built.



This is my finished insect hotel in its final location.



I included sticks my insect hotel to facilitate ladybugs; I included wood with holes in it for solitary bees. For grass-carrying wasps, I put some grass in a section of the hotel.

The habitat tha ladybugs enjoy seems to inlude sticks:

Ladybugs require surprisingly little in order to thrive, only really needing their prey (aphids), a little water and some sticks and branches to shelter under and climb on.

Solitary bee habitat seems to include wodo with holes in it:

Cavity nesters lay their eggs in small holes–like those in wood made by birds and insects, or in dried hollow reeds or stems.

Grass-carrying wasp habitat appears to include grass, so I made a section with grass in it:

Grass-carrying wasps prefer to lay their eggs in nests made above ground, unlike some other solitary wasps...The brood cells are prepared with a lining of grass and provisions of tree crickets for the larvae to feed on.

What incredibly creative designs! I will start building mine this week. Thank you for the Inspiration.

Mike Haasl wrote:This is a badge bit (BB) that is part of the PEP curriculum.  Completing this BB is part of getting the sand badge in Animal Care.

In this Badge Bit you will make a hotel for beneficial insects.  If you use pallets, do not use the blue ones.  They are covered in toxic ick.




To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
  - it must facilitate at least three different critters
  - it must be designed to do a halfway decent job of protecting them from rain
  - natural materials and steel/wood fasteners (no glue, plywood, stain, paint)

To show you've completed this Badge Bit, you must:
  - post a pic under construction
  - post a pic of your finished insect hotel in its final location
  - describe what critters you facilitate and how

Just completed my Pollinator's Palace! Walk, crawl or walk in! All materials used are what was lying around the property. No screws, nail or glue. Looking forward to welcoming my first guests.

im actually pretty proud of this one. it took me some time and a lot of work but it turned out really well. i decided to put it behind my trellis (you can see my raised bed garden in the background).

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
 - it must facilitate at least three different critters
 - it must be designed to do a halfway decent job of protecting them from rain
 - natural materials and steel/wood fasteners (no glue, plywood, stain, paint)

To show you've completed this Badge Bit, you must:
 - post a pic under construction
 - post a pic of your finished insect hotel in its final location
 - describe what critters you facilitate and how

See pictures '01_Before' and '02_During' to see insect hotel under construction.  I ended up moving the pallets from the original location to not shade out a plant.
See picture '03_After' to see finished insect hotel in final location
1) There are bundles of garden canes to facilitate solitary bees
2) There are sticks for ladybugs
3) Grass for grass-carrying wasps
4) Pine cones, bark, leaves, for other insects

To protect from rain:  The hotel is under the canopy of a tree.  There is a larger pallet on top for an overhang.  On top of the uppermost pallet are flat rocks and some extra bark to keep it dry below.  The top two pallets are jam packed with leaves, both for habitat and to keep the hotel below it dry.  The pallets are also raised up off the ground sitting on bricks.  There are rocks between the ground and bottom of pallet.

There is now vacancy at the hotel!

Started our first bug hotel with some left over wood scraps and a brick I found digging in our back yard.
We added the brick for solitary bees, sticks and twigs for ladybugs, pine cones for beetles and moths, and some dead leaves and bark for other insects.

The top overhangs to shelter it from rain.

Put together with screws, and tension where possible, no glue.

I found a website where they built a HUGE one at the Smithsonian. Those are goals.

I grabbed some old fence boards from a pile out back and cut them up and nailed them together to make a box.

The hotel has a space for solitary bees in the drilled wood round. (We’ve had bees in our siding, so giving them a productive place to live is exciting… hopefully someone will move in.)

I always find lots of pill bugs clustered under terra cotta pots on wood slabs or wherever a wood surface meets another wood surface. So the pill bugs get their own soggy, soft wood round and a brick flat on top.

I’ve also found earwigs and centipedes living in the same sort of place, so hopefully they’ll move in next door.

Ladybugs might take up residence in the sticks, or among the bark.

Finally… spiders might lay dormant among the grass stems. Or more earwigs!

And for whoever wants to move into pine cone village, apartments are being rented now!

As soon as I set the hotel down in its place, I saw a line spider crawling around on it. I must have grabbed his grass stem or bark section when I stuffed the hotel. First resident! He gets a plaque, or something.

Jessica Michell wrote:Started our first bug hotel with some left over wood scraps and a brick I found digging in our back yard.
We added the brick for solitary bees, sticks and twigs for ladybugs, pine cones for beetles and moths, and some dead leaves and bark for other insects.

The top overhangs to shelter it from rain.

Put together with screws, and tension where possible, no glue.

I found a website where they built a HUGE one at the Smithsonian. Those are goals.

Got some time and material to readdress this one - I intended to make this project only out of scraps or material that would otherwise go to waste so now that I have some cedar boards laying around it's time to finish this. Replaced the roof and bottom.

Put together my insect hotel using bamboo tubes for solitary bees, leaves and seed heads for beetles and sticks and pine cones for ladybugs. I placed it in a garden next to the house facing south for wind protection and warmth. My house has a 2' overhang which will add to rain protection (95% of our storms are from the north west)