Talk:Insect hotel

Howdy, great work with this page so far. One thing that can be improved is the style you use for citations, wikipedia has guidelines for them, you can check out that fun stuff at this link Wikipedia:Citing sourcesAcuteAccusation (talk) 20:24, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Solitary bees

Perhaps useful to mention:

• holes can be put in wood between 2 and 15 mm for these bees (so also holes bigger than 8 mm)
• the log should be put off the ground, some 1,5 meter high
• orientate on south for warmth (in northern hemisphere; on north in the southern hemisphere)

Links:

• http://www.bijenhotels.nl/
• http://www.wildebijen.nl/
• http://www.natuurpunt.be/nl/help-de-bijen-met-een-nestkast_2708.aspx
• http://www.natuurpunt.be/nl/bijenhotels-soorten-en-prijzen_2776.aspx

KVDP (talk) 17:04, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Only mason bees like osmia cornuta and osmia bicornis benefit from holes larger than 6mm, because they can wall up such holes and also build brood cells crosswise. Most wild bees use holes smaller than 6mm. The majority of wild bees are less than 1cm long and breed in holes 4mm and smaller. E.g. osmia caerulescens. The typical hole bee (heriades truncorum) on the other hand is only 7mm long and uses 3mm - 3.5mm holes. 93.217.39.25 (talk) 22:16, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Length should be mentioned: The bees prefer lengths where it is still dark enough and there is also space for an empty cell. Optimized lengths result from 12-15 times the diameter. Brood cells with 8 mm for the osmia genus should therefore be 12 cm long. This is not the case with many drilled insect hotels. 93.217.39.25 (talk) 22:16, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Notes

This wiki-article is adapted from its Dutch wiki-counterpart.

Usefulness of insect hotels

The article currently says (after an an edit war) that “the suitability of these enclosures for butterflies is disputed”. One source reports investigations on the matter, the conclusion being that butterflies don’t use butterfly hotels. No other source cited in the article reports any investigations on the matter. The second source currently cited just asserts that insect hotels are beneficial, which is, I think, insufficient by Wikipedia standards. Can anybody provide other relevant sources? palpalpalpal (talk) 12:08, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

The claim that butterfly hotels (or butterfly areas within insect hotels) are 'useless' is not sufficiently supported by the citation - which reports the observations of just one man. Indeed, as far as I can tell, there is insufficient scholarly study available to conclusively demonstrate their effectiveness either way. Nevertheless, dispute over their effectiveness certainly does exist, and this is worthy of inclusion in the article. The Woodland Trust citation, which you refer to above, does not report any investigations, but is clearly sufficient to demonstrate the statement that 'the suitability of these enclosures for butterflies is disputed'. Obscurasky (talk) 12:43, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

The first source reports the observations of more than one man :

[…] the North American Butterfly Association http://www.naba.org/ asked its members if they had found that butterflies actually use butterfly houses. Not one member said they had. As a result, NABA came to the conclusion that butterflies don't use these structures. […] The Entomology Department of Penn State University conducted a study to determine butterfly use of boxes from 1995-97 […] The results of the study prompted Robert Snetsinger, one of the entomologists conducting the research, to write, "I have yet to see evidence to support the notion that butterflies actually need or use butterfly houses. My suggestion is, if you want to do something useful for butterflies, build them a mud puddle."

The other source, reporting the observations of zero men and showing no research, is irrelevant to Wikipedia. palpalpalpal (talk) 08:29, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Problems with the name of a category of a subclass of insect hotel

There is a category on Commons that has a name that should be changed. The discussion started at sv:Wikipedia:Wikipediafrågor#Engelska_fråga and it continues on C:Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/07/Category:Mulmholk. Please take part! --Per W (talk) 07:27, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Typical Errors seen when builing insect nesting aids

I am german editor and wild bee breeder, interested in supporting these bees and other insects like wasps which typically can be found at these nesting aids and like to translate the section of the errors from the german wiki page. Maybe ypu want to add this:

It is currently estimated that over 90 % of all installed wild bee hotels or combination models with a wild bee section still have more or less serious construction and assembly faults. This applies to both commercially purchased models and those built by DIY enthusiasts. The effects of the different types of faults are very different: in the ‘most harmless’ case, the faulty wild bee hotels are hardly colonised or not colonised at all. However, the opposite of promoting wild bees is achieved if colonisation does take place but the brood does not hatch successfully and instead spoils, particularly due to fungal decay and parasitisation. Particularly worthy of criticism are mistakes that can injure the wings of mother bees or hatching young and, in the worst case, render them unable to fly. The most common mistakes at a glance :

❶ Use of softwood → has a strong tendency to crack and it is almost impossible to drill splinter-free holes in it → risk of wing injury and fungal decay, see wooden nesting sites

❷ Drill holes along the fibres in face wood/tree discs → high moisture absorption, cracking and splintering → risk of wing injury and fungal decay, see nesting opportunities made of wood

❸ Diameters of brood tubes that are too large → Diameters over 9 mm are hardly accepted or not accepted at all and serve at most as a night-time resting place for other insects, see brood tube diameter

❹ ‘Volume-destroying’ filling material such as pine cones, Bark scales, carpentry waste and similar organic waste materials are worthless for wild bees and have no significant benefit for other insects either, see ladybird compartment

❺ Combination with butterfly box: According to experts, the value and utilisation is very doubtful and is more likely to be seen as a ‘volume-crushing’ design trick by manufacturers, see butterfly box

❻ Combination with lacewing box that is too small: harmless, but not effective either. Lacewing boxes are only well accepted from minimum dimensions of 30 cm × 30 cm × 30 cm, see Lacewing box

❼ Use of hollow bricks: the mostly rectangular and too large chamber cross-sections are not accepted as nesting tubes. The bricks are only suitable as holders for inserted hollow stems, see nesting opportunities made of clay minerals

❽ pithy stems bundled and lying down: are not found by wild bees, for colonisation they must be arranged individually and upright, see Pithy plant stems

❾ too shallow models with insufficient brood tube depth → allows more drones than females to hatch in various wild bee species, rule of thumb: brood tube depth at least 10× brood tube diameter, see Brood tube depth

See the images in the setion for information: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insektenhotel#H%C3%A4ufige_Aufbau-_und_Best%C3%BCckungsfehler_an_Wildbienenhotels

The widespread distribution of improper models has far-reaching negative effects: The criticisable models continue to serve many DIY enthusiasts as unsuitable models for their own constructions and lead to an inheritance of these errors that is difficult to interrupt. The environmental education and environmental policy consequences are even more serious: The lack of a sense of achievement leaves the ‘hotel owners’ disappointed and frustrated and can also lead to the false conclusion that ‘nature conservation doesn't work anyway’. Such a conclusion also entails a risk of generalisation and transfer to related topics, even to the point of environmental fatalism.

Expert knowledge on the professional construction and inventory of wild bee hotels has been publicly available in book form and on the internet for many years. Despite this information and despite regular advice from wild bee enthusiasts to local and central management, this knowledge is still largely ignored by manufacturers and the trade. According to a rough estimate, at least 90 % of the large DIY chains and garden centres offer only partially suitable or completely unsuitable models in the ‘insect hotel’ category on their websites. 93.217.39.25 (talk) 21:29, 27 June 2025 (UTC)