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hi everyone I'm Susan Mulvihill welcome
back to my garden for my April 8th
column I wrote about insect hotels and
if you're not familiar with them they
are the coolest thing ever now my
husband and I built this one a couple of
years ago and the purpose of an insect
hotel is to house beneficial insects and
pollinators this is a very important
component of a productive vegetable
garden and if you have an orchard or a
berry patch so the pollinators of course
are going to pollinate flowers on
fruiting plants and beneficial insects
are going to help you out in your garden
because they will take care of the
damaging types of insects so I think
they are very important to have now we
are going to build a second insect hotel
today so let's get started on it I'll
show you everything you need to know
about them when it comes to building an
insect hotel there's really only two
rules that you need to remember the
first is to put a roof on the top and
that is to protect the contents and the
inhabitants from the weather and the
open side needs to face south that's so
that the Sun can warm everybody inside
but when it comes to design there are no
rules you can make it as simple or
elaborate as you want when we made our
first insect hotel we decided we wanted
to use recycled materials from previous
projects so we're going to do that again
with this insect hotel I found a bee
hive super leftover and so I decided
that will be the main part of the
structure we've got a couple of roof
shingles that we're going to use for the
top we have some blocks of wood that
we're going to drill holes into for the
mason bees and solitary bees and then we
have some boards from an old picket
fence and we're going to use those now
none of this wood has been pressure
treated so I wanted to make sure you are
aware of that the first step we need to
do is to trim some of this wood so we
can start assembling it
okay so far so good we've got some
shelves in here we've got a nice little
peaked roof lots of cubby holes to put
stuff into next step will be to put on
the roofing now before I forget I wanted
to show you two different types of mason
bee housing that you can purchase at
garden centers and that craft shows so
here's a nice little mason bee house and
it's filled with tubes for the bees to
lay their eggs in and here's a tube
that's filled with all sorts of mason
bee tubes we have this in our orchard
and it works great and here's a fun
simple idea for making an insect hotel
if you have an old tree stump like this
old Aspen of ours you can just drill
holes in the side of it and you'd be
amazed at how quickly the mason bees and
solitary bees are attracted to it so
that is extra simple the structure of
our insect hotel is complete and now
it's time to do my very favorite part
which is filling all the nooks and
crannies with things that will attract
beneficial insects and pollinators now I
have to be honest with you
the weather is awful it's very cold it's
very windy and I had envisioned this
lovely sunny day for a project like this
well no such luck so I'm trying to tough
it out and be good about it but this
actually is a great time of year to make
an insect hotel and set it out into your
garden and here's why
pretty soon mail mason bees will be
emerging from where they spent the
winter about two weeks later the females
will emerge they'll mate and then the
females will be going around
looking for places to lay their eggs and
they love tubes and openings so you'll
notice there are pieces of wood in here
including branches and my husband
drilled a bunch of holes in them so when
we made our first insect hotel we
purchased a long drill bit for our drill
it is 5/16 diameter and it's very long
you could also do holes as small as a
quarter inch in diameter but typically
you make the holes about six inches deep
as close as you can get to that so these
holes are going to attract the mason bee
females they are going to want to lay
eggs in there and they lay multiple eggs
they'll make a little chamber lay an egg
and then they seal it off then they make
another chamber lay an egg seal it off
and so on so this is really cool so we
have all sorts of branches and such with
the holes in there but there are other
materials I'm going to use I took apart
some cardboard boxes and roll them up
loosely and tied them with a little bit
of jute twine and this is attractive to
ladybugs and other types of beneficial
insects and so these are going to go in
here pine cones those would work also we
did make a purchase
we bought some Reed's from our local
garden center the reeds are six inches
long you'll notice they're open on one
end they're plugged on the other which
is good just make sure you put the open
end on the outside of your insect hotel
that's another thing that's going to
attract those mason bees also when I was
cleaning up one of my flowerbeds
I found a lily flower stalks have
openings in them so I cut them all to
six inches in length and those are going
to get stuffed into here I also had a
lot of branches from some pruning and so
I cut them into 6-inch links now a very
important thing I wanted to point out
about filling up an insect
Hotel is that you really don't want any
paper wasps to find an area that's on
like the roof of a section that they
could build a paper wasp nest on and so
we will fill this to the gills basically
from the bottom to the top of every
section because we do not need a paper
wasp nest in there but otherwise
everybody else is welcome okay so I
guess I'm gonna get started on this
okay I finally got it all filled up what
do you think I think that insect hotels
are so cool
now this one is going out in our orchard
and we want to attract as many mason
bees and solitary bees as possible
because we want good pollination for our
fruit trees so that's why you're seeing
so many things that will attract them in
here but certainly I could have put in a
lot of other types of materials to
attract other types of insects I do hope
you'll consider building your own insect
hotel because they are a wonderful tool
they're great for the garden they're
very educational they're fun and it's a
great thing to get kids involved with it
helps them understand that insects are
good not for squishing and it shows them
how cool nature really is I'll see you
next week for the next video
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