Tips & Tricks On Building Your Own Bug Hotel

Say goodbye to the garden gnomes – a bug hotel is the latest trend in parks and back gardens across New Zealand! Just like its name, a bug hotel is a home for insects. It’s a tool used to attract beneficial bugs into your garden; a bit like your very own army against aphids and a team of flower pollinators. Making your own insect homes are a ton of fun and having already made a Squoodles one, it’s time to pass on the tips and tricks we learnt from doing so to you!

Tips on Making a Bug Hotel at Home

Even the birds and bees need a place to rest their head, get busy in the bedroom and catch up on some sleep. Why not provide them with some incentive to do so at your place?

Making a bug hotel can be as simple or as elaborate as you’d like. A quick search on Pinterest will provide you with plenty of visual inspiration, but that’s not the only thing you need to consider. When designing and building the Squoodles bug hotel, we discovered many things, including:

• Identify the insects you want first – what plants are you growing in your garden? Do they need specific insects to help them? Which bugs will eat your less desirable ones?
• How much space do you have? Will it need to be attached to the fence, lying on the ground or free standing?
• What materials and tools do you have available to build it? Obviously, skill is also going to come into play here, unless you’re going to say “the kids built it.”
• What would you like it to look like? Different little people have different ideas, so it pays to get everyone on the same page first.

Let’s now move onto the actual construction!

How to Build Your Bug Hotel

We’ve made a list of the tasks to help you and your family start to design and build your own insect hotel …

1. Collect your materials – from pinecones, old logs, bark, leaves, sticks and seed pods; bugs love different sizes and types of dry and organic material.
2. Create the shell – you could use chicken wire, timber planks, old crates and even a cardboard box for the outside of the hotel. Just remember that it’s going to be in the weather, so the type of material you use will determine it’s lifespan.
3. Decide on the inside – will you section off the shell into little rooms where you’ll add one type of organic material? Or will you add it in layers, or put it all in together?
4. Pop it in one area – make sure that it can be seen well by the littlies and accessible too. Half the fun is also checking out what’s moved into the neighbourhood!

You can also help increase your local population of butterflies by using our Envelope Garden Butterfly Kit! It’s a great way to get kids interested in gardening too.