insect hotels (8,170 offers*)

Due to our heavy intervention in nature and the pesticides that modern agriculture uses, we make it pretty hard for insects. Insect hotels offer the little animals a new refuge where they can settle undisturbed.
With such a protection house you contribute to the preservation of native species. This is not only a question of morality, as many insects, such as wild bees, are important for our lives. They are part of important processes in our nature and thus ensure life as we know it.

What do I fill my insect hotel with?
To make insects feel at home in your hotel, you need the right equipment. This includes tube-like entrances, as many animals like to nest in narrow tubes or crevices.
Drilled hardwood, bamboo or pithy stems such as reeds or elderberries are suitable here. If you want to provide a home for butterflies, thin branches with a maximum diameter of five millimetres are suitable. If you find empty snail shells, you can use them as nesting sites for wild bees. Other suitable filling materials for your insect hotel include

• Straw,
• pine cones,
• wood shavings,
• dry leaves,
• bark mulch,
• clay or
• dead wood.

Insects love sun and warmth. The warm rays make them more active and they dry out faster after a rain shower. The insect hotel should be placed in a sheltered location, and you should also avoid orienting it towards the northwest. This is the central European weather side and therefore not ideal for insects.
An orientation to the southeast is ideal for the little animals, as the larvae need a lot of warmth to hatch in spring. Therefore, you should make sure that the chosen location gets sun all day.

An insect feeder is not only an option, but an essential part of your insect hotel. If you don't have a pond, a rainwater collector or other permanently filled water source on hand, you can use a bird bath. Other shallow bowls are also suitable for offering insects refreshment.
It is important that the water is shallow and that the birds can easily get out of the drinker. Rain barrels are unsuitable and need a lid. Due to the slippery walls, the insects cannot get out of the water and drown.

Even if an insect hotel and a bird house look good together, it is not recommended to place them near each other. Birds are the natural predators of most insects.
If you want to offer both species a protected home in your garden, you should place the nesting sites separately. If the distance is too small, the insect hotel will function more as a snack bar for the birds than as a home for the insects.
To protect the little animals, you can screw a rabbit wire in front of the hotel at a certain distance. This must be far enough away from the entrance holes so that the birds cannot reach it when they stick their beaks through the wire.