Hotels for insects?

I didn’t even know these “hotels” existed until I found a few in the forests and parks around here. They are a serious thing!

Do you know about “Insect Hotels”? If not then well, here you will. I had never heard about them until I arrived in Switzerland and began to walk its parks and forests. And it’s not a local thing but rather something well documented and existing in many countries. Google it and you’ll see.

Wikipedia says that an Insect Hotel is a man-made structure created to provide shelter for insects. Man-made is key, because of course insects build their own nests and homes. Underground, inside trees, between rocks, or with materials like mud, straw, wax, etc.

The Wikipedia article continues by explaining that Most consist of several different sections that provide insects with nesting facilities — particularly during winter, offering shelter or refuge for many types of insects. And later on it explains that these hotels can host many kinds of insects, such as ladybirds, solitary bees, and solitary wasps. I was surprised by the latter two, because I always thought bees, wasps, and similar insects lived exclusively in swarms.

Let’s inspect together two insect hotels around here.

The insect hotel in the lead photo, which I show in full below, looks like the prototypical insect hotel you’ll find on an online search: a kind of house with a roof that probably protects the place from heavy rains, and several pieces of materials that insects will probably like: perforated blocks of wood, logs, and rocks; straw; small branches; and alike. A metallic net serves to keep all these materials in place. You can see this one with the inscription “Hôtel à insectes” which is the French for our subject:

Let’s give a look at the “rooms" offered by this hotel:

Apparently, there are 3 main types of rooms: logs with wholes drilled, open bricks, and straw. I guess different kinds of insects will prefer different kinds of beds?

Here’s another hotel, a bit more hidden under some trees at the edge of a forest:

The “rooms” are essentially of the same 3 types as above. Let’s zoom into the “drilled logs” rooms:

As I read to prepare this story, I found all this very interesting. If you want to know more, from someone that seems to be an expert on Insect Hotels, check this out:

That blog is super interesting in fact! Highly recommended!

But hey, I was thinking… based on the definition given by Wikipedia, then man-made honeycombs would also be insect hotels…

There’s a set of honeycombs inside a forest close to where I live. Here it is:

I didn’t want to get too close to it, because there were some hundreds of bees flying all around these “rooms”. They aren’t visible in the shot because they were flying like crazy. But believe me, they were there by the hundreds!

Zooming in you can see some bees stepping on the “doorsteps” of their “rooms”:

Next time I visit my in-laws, who have active honeycombs, I will investigate further and try to take some close shots with a GoPro -of course wearing propers clothes to avoid bites!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this ride through Insect Hotels. Follow me for more nature photography.

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