A bug bungalow is a winter habitat for beneficial insects, but I like to think they are also part garden art. You may know them by many names—insect hotel, hostel, or hideout, or one of the many given charming names. But nothing is charming about the massive habitat loss around our city, state, country, and even in our own back yards. Each of us can do our part for habitat restoration!
By building bug bungalows, you're contributing towards a better environment. While they do attract insects, which is the goal, bug bungalows will also become a conversation starter. For your family and friends, the garden becomes a center of education. The Joslin Garden is having this critical conversation!
Too often, fall gardeners cut back spent summer stalks to tidy up. While it's best to leave these stalks up during the winter to provide habitat for beneficial insects, not everyone embraces this look. Or, if you live in an HOA community, the rules will not likely allow it.
In The Joslin Garden, we'll practice a special kind of tidying, allowing us to cut back enough for visual appeal while still leaving enough to provide winter nesting sites. It's a good compromise. Leaving six- to seven inches tall of pity and hollow-stem stalks is still enough for nesting. You can still do your part and not be fined by your HOA!
While ready-made insect hotels are available to buy, it's great fun making your own bespoke bungalow. Using what's on hand—salvaged or recycled materials—begin to build the walls and roof for shelter, and then think inside the box!
We were lucky to have a head start with bee boxes built as an Eagle Scout project for the Bee Better Naturally non-profit. We donated three boxes to The Joslin Garden.
The simplest structure is a wooden box, opened at one end, and stuffed with the material where beneficial insects can bed down. Bug bungalows also need to be watertight, so residents stay dry after every downpour. Extra or found tiles, felt, or corrugated roofing are some of the options for weatherproofing. Our Eagle Scout boxes are already watertight!
Bug bungalows can be small like ours and scattered throughout the property or created as one central high-rise built from palettes or other buildable, stackable materials.
I've seen these, and they do work very well! However, I've spoken with Doug Tallamy, Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and most notably, to me, as the author of Bringing Nature Home, published in 2009, among other publications. To paraphrase my interview with Dr. Tallamy, he said, These massive high-rise Air Bee and Bees are cool and great for educational purposes. However, the nesting sites are also vulnerable to massive loss if the structure and the nesting insects within are affected if a neighbor uses a mosquito control spray company that drifts onto your property…and it will.
For educational purposes, The Joslin Garden will do just that; we will also build an Air Bee and Bee made from pallets, and insects will come! Chris has already obtained several pallets to build our own. I think this is a marvelous idea. We will place it soon, and each Thursday, the volunteers and I will begin to add to it!
Professor Tallamy also started an organization called Home Grown National Park. This non-profit organization is a grassroots call-to-action to restore biodiversity, one garden at a time, by planting native plants.
The Joslin Garden is now on the map! Perhaps you're interested in committing your home garden or organization by agreeing to plant more native plants and get on the map. My home garden is on the map! Are you next?
YOU NEED MORE THAN A BOX
You also need a garden or at least a space with plenty of flowering native plants. Your area has to be receptive to attract beneficial insects, and no pesticide spraying can occur on your property!
Here are three plant types your garden needs to attract beneficial insects:
Nectar provides beneficial insects with sugar. A few excellent sources are carrots, fennel, zinnia, coneflowers, and a host of others. Once planted, enjoy all the visitors to sup your flowers.
Pollen provides protein for the good guys. To begin, plant pollen-rich asters, Asteraceae spp., goldenrod, Solidago spp., and coneflowers, Echinacea spp., and so many more.
Trap plants to attract insects, on which beneficial insects feed, including nasturtiums, Tropaeolum spp., Shasta daisies, Leucanthemum × superbum, and even milkweed, Asclepias spp. Aphids love milkweed. But then again, you're already growing milkweed for the monarch butterflies, right?!?
PROVIDING NESTING NEEDS
By providing a variety of plant materials—sticks, leaves, straw, bark, and more—within your bug bungalow—you'll encourage all sorts of garden friends to lodge.
How can you be sure that you're only providing shelter for beneficial insects? Well, you can't. That's the rub. Undesirable insects, such as earwigs, Forficula auricularia, may move in too. Some may even eat their neighbors! You can't control what happens within your Bug Bungalow—just trust that if you provide enough space for the good guys, you can create balance in the garden.
It's also very important to protect the hotels from the worst of the winter weather. Heavy rain will get into the wood and cause it to rot. It can also break down the mud walls that the mason bees have created to secure their eggs inside.
If your spot is not sheltered from the rain, move the bungalow in late autumn or early winter to somewhere more protected. The ones at The Joslin Garden will have protection. Please don't bring the insect hotel inside your house over winter! The insects need to be kept cool since they are hibernating! Store it in a shed or under a ledge, and put it back in early spring.
ATTRACTING LADYBUGS, Coccinellidae spp.
One of our Bug Bungalows filled with plant material to attract ladybugs,
Ladybugs like to overwinter as large groups in between dry plant material. Twigs packed together to give the ladybugs plenty of room to squeeze in and wait for warmer days. Next spring, when the insects wake, they'll lay eggs near their food source, like aphids and mites, and will then be poised to clean your plants of these unwanted insects.
Pinecones are also a great plant material to use to attract ladybugs.
Another ladybug bungalow located next to our wood pile.
Looking for an easy craft for your kids? See what you can do with pinecones and chicken wire!
PICTURE COMING
What to do
1. Cut a large square of chicken wire. The size depends on how big you want to build your ladybug lounge
2. Make a pile of pinecones in the middle, and lift up the edges to make an enclosure around them
3. Fold in or cut out the excess
4. Tie the chicken wire into a ball, add a string to hang the bungalow in a sheltered spot in the garden
ATTRACTING NATIVE BEES—Nesting Suggestions
Placed in a sunny location, the contents in this bee box will be built as the summer goes on. Both pity and hollow stems will be cut to size and added as found.
Did you know that seventy percent of our native bees are ground dwellers? None of these bees will need an above-ground plant material wintering site. They'll dig a little hole in the soil for winter hibernation. However, many solitary bees like to nest in hollow stems for the winter.
The circles made in these leaves are from the leafcutter bee. The cut leaf fragments are used to form nest cells. Leafcutter bees nest in soft, rotted wood, or in the stems of large, pithy plants, such as roses.
Contrary to the term, solitary, female solitary bees often pack several bees in a stem before closing off the opening with some mud (mason bee) or leaves (leafcutter bee) and then having a good snooze until spring. Solitary bees aren't social within hives like the European honey bee, having residents of upwards of 50,000 bees!
Drilled wood: Solitary bees and wasps are attracted to holes drilled into the wood as they offer the perfect place to lay their eggs in peace. Drill holes of different sizes, between 0.2-inch and 0.4-inch diameter, offering spaces for different species. Leafcutter bees, Megachilidae spp., and small bumblebees Apidae spp. For mason bees, Osmia spp., a good average size is 5/16th of an inch diameter.
PICTURE COMING
Bamboo canes/Paper straws: Hollow stems such as bamboo canes, or even new paper straws provide nesting holes for solitary bees. The female will lay their eggs then seal up the hole using mud or leaf litter.
ATTRACTING LACEWINGS—Nesting Suggestions
Lacewing eggs. Photo Credit Nathalie Beauchamp
Dried materials: Dried materials like hay, pine straw, dried grass, rolled-up cardboard, and even paper egg cartons make up the suitable materials for a cozy lacewing, Chrysoperla, spp., hangout.
If you want to fill an ample space, create smaller bunches held together with twine or elastic bands. Straw also works as a gap filler when combined with other materials.
While lacewings may be beautifully intricate to look at, they are indeed the gardener's best friend, devouring aphids and other pests such as scale and many types of caterpillar and mites. You and your family can even make lacewing nesting sites with an open-ended plastic bottle stuffed with straw or cardboard to prevent it from turning soggy. A GREAT craft for children!
ATTRACTING GROUND BEETLES and HOVERFLIES—Nesting Suggestions
Ground beetles Carabidae spp., and hoverflies, Syrphidae spp.,—twigs, sticks, and stems. Bundled together, sticks and twigs of different sizes offer welcome lodgings for ground beetles. These beetles chomp away at many pests that hinder our crops, including aphids and carrot root fly larvae. Hoverflies are flower pollinators and pest patrollers, and are attracted to the same types of materials—the larvae have an insatiable appetite for aphids while the adults feed on nectar as they pollinate flowers. Paper towel insert and toilet tissue rolls are perfect for making small tubes suitable for insects and solitary bees. Or roll up a length of corrugated cardboard – the tiny tubes are ideal for little critters!
WANT MORE THAN A BOX?
Rotting logs: Perfect for wood-boring beetles whose larvae will feast on the decaying wood. Place logs in an area, so the logs stay nice and damp and mix with other decaying plant matter to attract centipedes, devouring slugs. Other woodland litter insects such as millipedes and woodlice also provide a welcome food source for birds. Remember cover and snags are valuable wildlife protectors.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
It's all very well building a handsomely equipped bug bungalow, but it must also be placed in a prime position to become the destination of choice.
Set up your bungalow in a sheltered area of the garden away from the prevailing wind. In the Raleigh area, according to the state climate office, prevailing winds are generally from the southwest for ten months of the year and from the northeast during September and October.
Most insects prefer slightly damp conditions, but solitary bees demand the sunniest aspect possible to help them get out and about on a cold day. Knowing this also makes a good argument for having multiple bungalows for the various insect types since their needs are not all the same.
For the quickest results attracting residents to your bungalow, locate your nesting site close to an existing insect hotspot: a hedge, bank of nectar-rich flowers, or a pond.
Hang the bug bungalow four- to five feet above ground. Instead of putting a nail into a tree, use a rope or strap to hold instead.
Until soon,
Helen Yoest (M.S. Environmental Science)
The Joslin Garden Program Coordinator