Building an Insect Hotel

An insect hotel is an ideal way to attract beneficial insects to your garden. A few days ago, we decided to build our own insect hotel so the interns set off around the farm to find materials like hollow sticks, pipes, rocks, and anything that looked like it could be used to house insects.


We found an old dresser out in the wood shed and decided to use it as the main base for our insect hotel because of the conveniently located shelves where we could place our assortment of sticks, rocks, and pipes. To make a sturdier back for the dresser, we cut some pieces of oddly-shaped plywood into nearly identical pieces and screwed them in.

Next, we drilled holes in some of the larger pieces of wood that we found to create more places for the insects to live.

Then we moved the hotel into the back of the garden and placed the different objects onto the shelves and the ground nearby for particularly large sticks and other objects that would not fit in the rest of the dresser. The insect hotel is open for business!

 

Read more about insect hotels and get some great ideas for building your own here.