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How to make a bug hotel and attract beneficial insects to your garden

Give your guests a comfy night’s rest. - by Melissa King
  • 07 Jan 2022

With a bug hotel, your friendly guests will never leave – especially when you give them the best breakfast ever – your garden!

WATCH: How to build a bug hotel

Luxury, comfort and style are individual and personal choices – especially when it comes to high-class hideaways.

So who knew some creatures find tunnels tempting, are turned on by twigs or sleep deep in bliss on a straw mattress? Beneficial garden bugs are very discerning, yet there’s a posh insect hotel in waiting among your garden debris that can make a handy bolthole for the better bugs of our world.

Make an insect hotel

There’s no design template for building an insect hotel. It depends on what materials you have, which should be natural and preferably recycled. You can leave appropriate plant litter about your garden and your insect friends will find it. Or do a purpose build with an old wooden box – or make your own - to house your hotel rooms.

NOTE Don't use treated timber - the chemicals repel insects. 

Gather your supplies

• 50 x 200mm x 1m hardwood sleeper

• 200mm x 10-20mm-dia dry branches with a pith centre, such as hydrangea, bamboo or tibouchina

• Piece of corrugated iron, for roof

• 200mm x 100-150mm-dia log

You'll also need

Tinsnips; power drill; 6 x 160mm auger drill bit; 10 x 190mm auger drill bit; sandpaper; handsaw/power saw; tape measure; 75mm and 50mm screws

Here's how

Step 1 

holes in log

Drill randomly spaced 6mm and 10mm holes in ends of timber log.

Step 2 

Cut two 300 x 200mm lengths and two 100 x 200mm lengths of hardwood. Position pieces in butt-joint box shape. Drill a clearance hole into each corner of top and countersink, then drill corresponding pilot holes through sides. Drive in 75mm screws to secure top to sides. Flip assembly and repeat to secure bottom to sides.

Step 3 

drilling

Drill randomly spaced 10mm holes into 1 face of box. Sand area.

Step 4 

top

Cut corrugated iron to size, leaving overhang at sides to suit. Bend sheet in half widthways, reopen and position on top of box. Put log inside, then secure corrugated iron to sides of box with 50mm screws.

bee hotel

Final look!

Bug hotel ideas

What to put in a bug hotel

  • Logs with holes drilled through them of various widths and to various depths from 3-10cm. Don’t drill all the way through or you’ll create drafts.
  • Bamboo culms with nodes – or interior walls - still intact.
  • Holes drilled into untreated timber offcuts.
  • Stones.
  • Twigs and sticks.
  • Banksia or pine cones, clumps of gumnuts.
  • Bark.
  • Terracotta or clay tiles or crumbling bricks.
  • Shredded cardboard, straw or coconut fibre.
tree hotel

Anything natural can be re-used as bespoke accomodation.

Getty

How to attract different insects

  • Solitary native bees love holes in wood, either drilled through a log or a block of timber, or bamboo culms that have natural cavities, or in hollows in dead wood. Some dig holes in sand or clay.
  • Ladybirds are attracted to bundles of twigs and sticks.
  • Lacewings like to nestle in straw, coconut fibre or shredded cardboard.
  • Many beetles scurry under bark.
  • Assassin and damsel bugs like soft greenery.
  • Earwigs wriggle under sand or stones.
bug hotel
Getty

What are the benefits of using a bug hotel?

Bug hotels attract good insects. Broadly speaking, there are two types of benefits: pollinators who ensure we have flowering plants and vital veg and carnivores that eat pests like caterpillars that destroy precious plants.

In winter, insects can use your hotel rooms to hibernate. In summer it can be a place of nest.

Beneficial insects that use bug hotels

  • Native bees aren’t big on honey-making, their strong suit is as a pollinator.
  • Ladybirds, lacewings, hoverflies and assassin bugs eat aphids.
  • Ladybird adults and larvae also eat thrips, leafhoppers, moth eggs and small caterpillars.
  • Damsel bugs eat caterpillars, moth eggs, aphids, leafhoppers.
  • Lacewings, hoverflies, ladybirds, beetles and earwigs eat wood lice and wood mites.
  • Native earwigs devour soft-bodied insects such as caterpillars.
bug hotel
Getty

Can you paint a bee hotel?

As the viability of European honey bee populations come under increasing threat, now’s the time it entice native bees into your garden. Make a paradise for these pollinators with colour by painting your hotel in enticing colours - such as purple, aqua blue, orange and yellow.

colourful hotels

Entice bees into your patch of paradise with bright colours!

Getty

The best place to put a bug hotel

Position your hotel so it faces all-day sun if you live in a cool climate and morning sun in warmer and tropical areas. Give it a roof to protect your guests and their rooms from rain.

Build it near a grouping of salvia, sedum and artemisia - but make sure its sheltered from winds.

bee hotel

Your hotel will be full if you put it close to a day-time hot spot.

Getty

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Melissa King
Melissa King
Melissa King is one of Australia’s most popular and respected garden experts and television presenters. Melissa joins the Better Homes and Gardens team as its respected garden expert. “For a gardening presenter, this is the pinnacle and I’m beyond excited to be working alongside people I have admired for years,” says Melissa.

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