Insect Hotel

01 · THE CANES ARE WHAT WORKS

The bamboo fills up; the butterfly slot does not

The bamboo cavities, in several diameters, are the part that fills on its own: a solitary bee finds a tube of the calibre it is after, stocks it with pollen, lays an egg, walls it up and repeats. You can see it from outside: the ends end up sealed with mud or with cut leaf.

The central space, with its red compartment, mostly draws earwigs and lacewings. Butterflies appear in the leaflet of nearly every insect hotel and almost never use them: they overwinter in bark, leaf litter and sheds. That is no reason to rule it out, but a reason to buy it for the bamboo.

02 · SOLITARY BEES, NOT HONEY BEES

Mason and leafcutter bees, which build no hive

What occupies the tubes are solitary bees — mason and leafcutter bees above all — not the honey bee. Each female works on her own: no queen, no colony and no stores to defend, so they practically never sting.

As pollinators they are first rate: they carry dry pollen on the belly rather than packed on the legs, so they shed it flower by flower. That is why they are used in fruit growing.

Solitary wasps turn up too, and they are not the ones that bother you on the terrace: they hunt caterpillars and aphids and build no communal nest.

03 · WHERE TO HANG IT: THE MORNING SUN

Orientation decides how much they fly

A solitary bee needs warmth to fly. If the hotel gets the early sun — facing anywhere between east and south — the tubes warm up soon and the day starts earlier. Facing west it only gets the afternoon sun, and the cold mornings are lost.

The rest: sheltered from wind and driving rain, at 1.5 to 2 metres, and near flowers. The galvanised roof protects from above, but a hotel that takes the rain head-on rots from within.

04 · IT IS NOT AN INSECTICIDE

It houses beneficials; it does not control a pest

The lacewings and ladybirds that shelter there eat aphids, and that helps. But a hotel is not a control method: it does not wipe out a pest, it does not replace a treatment and its effect is not measured in one season.

What it does do, and it is not little, is settle pollinators and beneficial insects in a garden or a vegetable plot. You buy it for that, and because you can watch it work.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

Renew the canes every two or three years: a hotel that is never touched accumulates parasites and fungi, and ends up harming what it was meant to protect.