Heriades truncorum at insect hotel, Netherlands

This image is deeply zoomable and shows part of one of my insect hotels in the garden. This one features tubes at 5mm and smaller, and is well used this season. It mostly attracts small bees in the Megachilidae family that include Resin bees. These bees collect pollen via hairs on their underside. Example:

Where resin bees go, brood parasites follow, such as this species:

I'm most of all sharing the image as reference to be used later. I'm intrigued by the different types of mud used to fill the tubes, these should correspond to different species.

I have several insect hotels with larger tubes (5mm - 10mm) but they're very unsuccessful this season. I'm not sure why, could be due to the extremely wet season this year.

comments (2)

Ernst

Lion

Serious - How long are the tubes ? I will start building some.
Not seriously- how much rent do you charge the little bees? Posted one year ago
1. Ferdy Christant
  
  Lion
  
  These are 7cm in length. It seems to work in this case but longer is recommended: 8-15cm, ideally 10cm at least. As for diameter, 1cm is max but I recommend 8mm max. Many people report that larger diameter holes are not successful. Make sure the tubes are smooth inside, otherwise bees get their wings stuck. Mount it with the openings facing south. Make sure its leveled so that water can't get fully inside the tube, even better is a small roof extension. In case birds pick the tubes, you may also need some type of chicken wire. The other part is having the correct flowers around, which I guess depends on which species you want to attract.
  
  That's about all I picked up from the "science" of insect hotels.
  
  As for rent, I stopped charging it because every time I came to collect it, they close the door with mud. Posted one year ago