Two Insect Hotels & Bug Houses Designed and Made from Repurposed Materials - The Gite & The Chalet

There are so many fascinating insects living in a garden and they need both places to overwinter and somewhere to lay eggs in warmer months.

Many gardeners are fastidious in clearing away rotted wood, fallen branches, piles of leaves and herbaceous stems. This debris however, offers sought-after accommodation to a whole raft of arthropods, many of whom have kept the garden pest-free, as well as pollinating fruits and vegetables.

In order to compromise therefore, it is necessary to offer alternative accommodation. This is however not the whole story. Continued use of pesticides has severely depleted insect populations, so if you can offer a haven for them within you own garden, then you are also doing your bit to preserve the biodiversity and counteract the harm being done elsewhere

The following blog post offers two of our more simple designs, whereas the following article will share some of our more elaborate insect homes. These are all made from repurposed materials, untreated pallet wood, fruit crate wood and general garden debris. To decorate them, we use natural earth and mineral pigments, made, as the name suggests, from clays and semi-precious stones. Our article using natural pigments should help you, if you have never used them before.

The Gîte

This is one of the simplest form of solitary bee and lacewing houses, two types of insect who offer so much to the gardener. There are over 200 species of the former, one such, the Harebell bee is so small it can fit inside a wheat-straw stalk and often uses a disused woodworm burrow. When the bees find the accommodation to their liking they will stay throughout the year, using the hole as a nursery, making it the basis of an expanding colony for the garden. This is of great advantage, as it is the solitary bee, which does most of the task of pollinating our food crops. The recommended diameter of burrow to attract these bees is from 2-10 mm. You can achieve this by simply collecting suitable sized hollow stalks or you can do as we did above and drill out some of your old prunings, in our case; buddleia. The lacewing, a delicate and beautiful creature is a wonderful gardener's helper, with many of the species having a voracious appetite for aphids. This sort of accommodation can be sited anywhere you find a suitable opening but in order to attract the insects initially it is a good idea to site it where there are melliferous flowers

The Chalet

This is a nice little project and where you can use natural pigments to create some really harmonious designs as well as useful insect accommodation. They also make great gifts and can be either suspended or attached directly to walls or fences.

The chalets are made from pallet wood blocks with a piece of pallet wood planking for the backing board. They also have roof shingles cut from fruit crate wood. The roof shingles can be attached either with 15mm panel pins or, if you have it, a mechanical or electric stapler. The most difficult part is drilling the pallet wood block. I used 6 and 10mm drill bit.

If you are thinking of this as a project for a child, it could be given in kit form, even as a gift, for self-assembly and the opportunity to get creative in personal choice of decoration. From experience it is better to varnish or oil each individual element before the final assembly. You can have great fun mixing and matching the pigments and apart from being great gifts, these insect homes can make useful little items for a fund raising event or, who knows, the start of a whole new career! 

Truly the gift that keeps on giving, when we were wrapping up one of these as a birthday present, we noticed that one of the chambers was already occupied! It also makes a fascinating study to just sit and watch who comes to check out the accommodation. On the right, you can see that two holes have already been sealed. If you have leaf cutter bees, then they make for compulsive viewing.


Here is our detailed film on how to make the chalet:

A following post will share two more designs for insect hotels, again made from repurposed freely available materials, so until then, thanks for dropping by!Please feel free to share this article, comment and/or ask for further information.

All the best, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

RELATED ARTICLES

Home-made Insect Hotel from Repurposed Materials

The Bee Cosy for cosy bees is an elegant green gift for you to make using 99% recuperated materials...read more
 

Home-made Repurposed Wood, Luxury Insect Hotel

Fun to make and fascinating to watch, these insect hotels can make all the difference to the successful pollination of your fruit and vegetable...read more

An Insect Hotel as a Utility Box Cover - Design & Construction

The electricity company brought power to the property but sited the ubiquitous supply box right in front of the house. Not surprisingly, she is unhappy...read more

RETURN TO GREEN LEVER CONTENTS PAGE FOR MORE ARTICLES 

Home-made Insect Hotel from repurposed materials. Bee Cosy Bug House for happy Mason bees

 

Give the bees a gift - 'B is for Bee Cosy'

An insect hotel makes a great project and a gift you can be proud of. The following film shows you a detailed 'how-to' but if you need any more help. please get in touch. 

The Bee Cosy for cosy bees is an elegant green gift for you to make using 99% recuperated materials. This time the design uses more wood recycled from a fruit crate and in addition dried plant stems and thin branches from the garden. The Bee Cosy is a little more difficult than the Apple House bird feeder in the previous blog post: http://thegreenlever.blogspot.fr/2011/11/is-for-apple-house-diy-green-gifts.html

I know from experience this present is well received by friends, family and the bees and lacewings, its future tenants! The house will provide not only a Winter shelter for many small creatures including some 200 varieties of solitary bees but year round living accommodation too. These superb insects are an essential part of any garden, they pollinate and in the case of the lacewings consume vast quantities of garden pests such as aphids. Overwintering insects in an hotel encourages them to stay on and multiply in the Spring.

 



It's been a fantastic year in the garden, we've just gathered the third crop of figs and the greenhouses are still providing nasturtiums, tomatoes, lettuce, rocket, basil and lemon balm for Autumn salads. 

Planning Accommodation for Solitary Bees

For the interior section of the Bee Cosy I looked at various sites on the web, which had information on insect hibernation. Because the solitary bees are so diverse, they can easily be put off using a Bee Cosy if the accommodation is not to their liking. To make your Insect Hotel as attractive as possible you need a selection of hollow stems but the cube block from a pallet also makes an ideal nest box. You will need to drill the holes to the recommended diameter and depth for bees, although making some larger or smaller will also attract ladybirds, earwigs and the giant but friendly, European Black Bees. The rule I followed for the pallet block was a maximum diameter of 10 mm, I used a 8 mm drill.

 These holes are drilled right through the standard pallet cube/block

Some of the solitary bees are really tiny, the beautifully named, Harebell bee often reuses a vacated woodworm hole, so will need a nest no bigger than 2mm in diameter! You can therefore,  drill your block will several sizes of drill between 2-10 mm or make a separate house to attract a specific bee. You will also notice as you look through some of the sites that they recommend lining the holes with parchment paper, I believe this is because bees can get put off by sawdust or splinters but I just made sure I'd  tidied up the block. When the bees find the accommodation to their liking they will stay throughout the year, using the hole as a nursery, so your Bee Cosy could become the base of an expanding colony for the garden.

Loss of Habitats. Wither the Lacewing?

The stemmed section of the Bee Cosy is for all insects but also hopefully to accommodate lacewings. Why lacewings? Well this hugely beneficial insect is in decline because it no longer has the habitats in which to survive the Winter. The Lacewing has unfortunately fallen prey to the mania for tidy gardens and in particular to the whole army of people brandishing  snippers and secateurs, who issue forth in the Autumn to attack herbaceous borders and cart garden debris off to the local tip. Giving someone an insect house means they can still cut off the flower, herb and vegetable stems but these are then just relocated to a handy 'hotel'. 

Slightly angry Swallowtail caterpillar amongst the fennel stems.

Gardening for insects means leaving as many habitats as possible available for Winter use. The making of the Bee Cosy is in fact the only time we ever raid the borders to obtain these stems, which will provide a plethora of winter holiday homes for a whole myriad of insects.

When choosing stems and branches to use for nesting tubes, remember to think about toxicity, for example I used elderberry branches as recommended on various sites, although they are slightly toxic. All plants are not toxic to all species. 

Finishing off and siting your insect house

Ready for a wrap

The final Bee Cosy was decorated with a wash of acrylic water-based varnish, which had been tinted with natural mineral-based pigments. We have already used these on the Apple House and will be using them and other ecological finishes in the upcoming 'pallet presents', we therefore decided to devote the next blog to their use.

In order to help with positioning the Bee Cosy, I include a nail with the finished gift and a simple instruction on the best place to locate it. Solitary bees being cold-blooded need the warmth of the sun, so the Cosy should face south east or south. They tend also to like an uninterrupted flight path when nearing their home but need shelter form prevailing winds. Placing it amongst or near flowers is also a good idea.

Peace over the Hen House and the Bee Cosy!

How long will it take to make one of these? Around about four hours, including cutting the stems, perhaps a more satisfying experience that wandering around the shops or surfing the net trying to find an original gift!

Update: Last year in this very insect hotel above, a wren decided it was the ideal spot for a nest and removed all the hollow stems and filled the Bee Cosy with a beautiful moss and feather nest, which unfortunately was blow away in the wind before completed. We have since replaced this with one of our open-fronted nest boxes (the design is on this blog see 'Browse by Project' bottom right of this page). However, we did make our other stand-alone and wall-mounted designs with a layer of wire netting to stop this happening, as it was also frustrating for the poor wren! This has not been a problem with our tree-hanging designs, so it might also depend on positioning, as well as how many wild birds you have nesting in your area - we have a forest garden.

More designs on this blog

A step-by-step tutorial for our Luxury Insect Hotel for discerning arthropods (shown left) and two simpler but effective designs for Mason bees and lacewings, follow this link for The Gîte & the Chalet (Chalet pictured right).


If you enjoyed this article, then please feel free to share it, comment and/or ask questions.

Cheers, Andy

Some useful sites:

http://www.foxleas.com/bee_house.htm

http://www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/making-wildlife-habitat-recycled-found-materials

http://merseyforest.org.uk/howtoguides/hibernationandnesting.pdf

© Andy Colley 2014

RETURN TO GREEN LEVER CONTENTS PAGE FOR MORE ARTICLES 



Home-made Wild Bird Feeder from Repurposed Materials - A is for Apple House

Our handsome Polish crested cockerel Ruffles showing far too much interest in this easy to make pallet wood food dispenser, for use with fruit or fat balls.

This is something to make for your own garden but also we have made and given away many as presents. They make ideal gifts to take round to a house warming or Birthday party. We also have on this blog the 'how-tos' for various design bird boxes and an insect hotel all of which have film follow-ups. Many of our projects take less than an hour to assemble, even including the preparation. They also use a minimum of tools and purchased extras and they have scope for personalised, individual decoration and imagination. If you are really inventive you could even recuperate all your nails and tacks and take the price of your presents down to zero. The wood used in all the projects is untreated pallet wood so if you follow these links you will be able to pick up two articles with information on finding and using pallets:
http://thegreenlever.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-collect-pallets.html
and http://thegreenlever.blogspot.com/2011/11/few-guidelines-for-collecting-pallets.html


An Aid to Orchard management

We first came across the idea for an apple house in a garden centre in Holland it consisted of a piece of wood with the outline of an apple cut out of it. There was a wire to hold the fruit in place and a couple of strips on top to make a protective roof and give it the appearance of a house.

Apple picking with the Quality Control Inspectorate

Let them eat grapes. Omnivores also means fruitivores

We liked the idea for an apple house for our garden because we have a lot of apple trees and windfalls but the wild birds don't really get a look in with all the competition. I also think that wild birds feel more vulnerable eating on the ground, so the Apple House provides them with a safer and more natural position in which to enjoy the fruit.









Testing, testing, one, two three and four!








There is another more practical consideration for us as well and why this will be a much appreciated gift for anyone who has late apples, such as Jonagold. These fruit start to ripen  as the garden is beginning to prepare for Winter and the wild birds start to feel the urgency to store up some extra vitamins and minerals. So as Autumn begins to bite, so do they and finding the fruit not quite ripe, they move on, hopping and hoping for the next and the next apple to be ready.

Some thoughts about tools

The Apple House as designed for our video uses a minimum of simple hand tools and this bird feeder can with help and supervision easily be made part of a holiday project to get children interested in self-sufficiency and recycling.  Furthermore it can also be used as a way of introducing children to the practical use of hand tools, something which could be of immeasurable use in the not too distant future. As for financial concerns,  buying  power tools has never been cheaper, over the past couple of decades these latter have become a drug on the market and  you can pick up a handy and good quality cordless screwdriver, for example, for around 10 euros/dollars/pounds. Good hand tools however, are another story, 1930s novels are full of old men complaining about the quality of steel, they didn't know when they were well off.

You are often better buying old tools at a car boot or yard sale, they are usually of excellent quality and because of this can be sharpened and/or reset. Be aware of brand name old tools, over the past few years these have become collectors items and can now command very high prices. However, good tools are an investment and the more you become acquainted with them the more you will be competent to build up a fine collection.

                                                We are somewhere in the middle.

For the Apple House the tools you will need are as follows: a saw, tri-square, hammer and a tape measure.
 

You will also need the following materials and fixings, a pallet wood plank and block, some slats from a fruit crate, a few nails and tacks and some string. In addition you will need some interesting looking twigs and a pair of scissors or secateurs.

Handy hint for all projects - No tri-square? Use a CD box.

I get my fruit crates from my local organic shop, where we do our food shopping. They also give me the occasional pallet. In this way I know these crates come from organic growers and will not have contained potentially hazardous chemically treated fruit and veg.

The Apple House itself can be recycled in the Spring to become a nest box for a small bird, such as a wren, blue tit or robin. All it needs is the addition of a tacked on front and back made of fruit crate slats. Remove the twigs and in the Autumn transform it back to an Apple House.

With the addition of a piece of wood laid across the twigs the Apple House can be transformed into a table for small birds after the apples have all gone. Use string to attach rinds and nuts to the twigs for additional avian gourmet treats.

Now sit back, relax and watch Andy make the 'Apple House':

Hope you get to make one.

If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share it, comment and/or ask questions.

Cheers, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

RETURN TO GREEN LEVER CONTENTS PAGE FOR MORE ARTICLES