Environmentalists Urge Bird Lovers to Set Up ‘Insect Hotels’ in Their Garden for One Key Reason

If the garden were a living organism, then both birds and bugs would be valuable contributors to its health. Bugs are the creepy whisperers that catalyse the production of some of the juiciest fruits through pollination. Jumping from flower to flower, while sipping its nectar, the sticky pollen in the male part of the flower attaches itself to the insect’s body. So, when their body rubs against another flower, the pollen gets deposited on the female part of that flower, triggering the fertilization and reproduction process, per BBC. Essentially, birds love insects, and insects love flowers. This chain of love affairs is what keeps the garden breathing, peppy, and alive.

This is both good and bad news. Good because you now have a reason to cherish these prodigious pollinators that may sneak into your garden, even if uninvited. And bad because studies have shown that the insect population has collapsed by about 45% in the last 40 years, according to Spectrum News 1. This emerges as a threat to the larger bird population that thrives on worms and insects as food. The solution to this: insect hotels. Insect hotel, as the name suggests, is an accommodation you design for the good insects you’d like to invite and see in your garden space.  

“Native bees and flies play a crucial role in ecosystems, both as pollinators and food for birds. You can provide insects with a nesting habitat in the form of insect hotels. These small gestures can make a huge difference,” environmental science experts, Rochelle Steven and David Newsome from Murdoch University, write in The Conversation. An insect hotel is a win-win situation for everyone: the birds, the insects, and you, the gardener a.k.a. bird keeper. While insects receive free accommodation for survival and breeding, you receive a bounty of flowers and fruits as they pollinate and reproduce the seeds.

From time to time, a bird can swoop down and poke its beak into the hotel to grab an insect or two for a protein meal. Meanwhile, these insects, such as beetles, butterflies, moths, honeybees, ladybugs, hoverflies, centipedes, wasps, and bumblebees, will guard your plants and crops by preying upon the tiniest of pest predators. Hoverflies, for instance, are both pollinators and pest patrollers. They carry an insatiable appetite for aphids while the adults feed on nectar as they pollinate flowers, according to GrowVeg.

While there are readymade insect hotels available in the market, you can also craft an insect hotel in a fully customized design, using the materials you already have access to in your storehouse. Remember, all that these insects need is a bed where they can sleep, eat, and lay eggs. You can employ materials like old planks, old drink bottles, pipes, tapes, wooden logs, twigs, bamboo canes, dried grass, stems, leaves, broken tile fragments, and just about anything.

Experts at GrowVeg recommend making the hotel watertight or waterproof, so its residents don’t have to experience clumsiness during rain or storm. For a touch of luxury, you can furnish the hotel with decorations and designs of your choice, from flowers to drilled holes, and maybe mirrors. Once the rooms of the hotel are fully furnished and sturdy enough to accommodate its residents, you can then welcome the handsome insect guests by luring them with bowls of sweet flower nectar. Let the minibeasts check in!