Have you ever wondered how to help nature while beautifying your garden? Create a refuge for biodiversity at home!
Discover insect hotels, unique and essential structures to preserve the ecological balance of our gardens. Spread across our magnificent territory encompassing the Albères massif, the Côte Vermeille, as well as the Illibéris plain, these insect hotels offer a fascinating experience for nature lovers.
What is an Insect Hotel?
This is a specially designed construction to provide a secure and comfortable home to beneficial insects such as bees, ladybugs, butterflies, and many others.
These structures play a key role in protecting biodiversity, ensuring the pollination of plants and the control of harmful parasites.
What materials should I use to attract insects?
Shelters are made from natural materials such as wood, straw, branches and stones, which mimic the natural habitats of insects. Here's how different materials attract different types of insects:
- Ladybugs: Great predators of aphids, they like piles of dead leaves, dry materials, pine cones, hollow stems, bark and moss.
- Butterflies: Important pollinators, they find refuge in straw, grass, wooden stems and flat stones.
- Bees: Carpenter bees prefer logs with holes in them, osmia appreciate hollow stems and snail shells. Bees in general like raspberry bushes and bamboo.
- Spiders: Essential for controlling populations of unwanted insects, they love to take refuge in broken tiles.
- Lacewings and Anthocoridae: Lacewings prefer straw and pierced logs, while anthocorids like dead leaves and bark.
- Forficula (earwigs), Staphylins and Ground beetles: Forficulae appreciate pine cones, straw and wood fibers. Rove beetles, for their part, find refuge in bundles of branches and dead leaves, and ground beetles nest under pieces of branches.
Steps for building an Insect Hotel, follow the step-by-step guide!
Equipment:
– Tin can
– Natural elements (branches, leaves, stones, etc.)
Production :
- Clean the can, remove any sharp edges!
- Fill the can with natural elements.
- Using a string, surround the can halfway up, tie a knot and tie it to a tree branch sheltered from the wind.
Where to find hotels in Insects?
When leaving for discovery of insect hotels scattered in the Pyrenees Mediterranean, you will have the unique opportunity to observe these little creatures up close and learn about their crucial role in our ecosystem.
It’s a fun activity perfect for families and nature lovers.
Dive into the universe of these key players in biodiversity and learn how they help with pollination and pest control. You'll see up close the fascinating diversity of life that lies right beneath our feet.
Get started!
By creating or maintaining an insect hotel at home, you encourage the presence of beneficial insects in your garden. Use natural and diverse materials to attract a variety of species and thus contribute to a healthy and balanced environment.
You will be amazed by the rich biodiversity and the importance of each little creature in your own ecosystem!
Article written by Jordan TORRENTS
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