Small holes and cavities offer shelter to numerous insects. The animals gladly accept an insect hotel in order to breed in it. If you have laid your eggs, you will recognize this by the closed hole. The only question is how you deal with the sealed tubes if they are still sealed after a year. You can find out all this and more on this page.
A closed hole means: Here is occupied
Recognize insect species by the hole closure
- The Red Mason Bee: Coarse, rough mortar, loam or clay
- The hole bee: pebbles trapped in resin
- The scissor bee: pebbles trapped in resin
- The Mud Wasp: Clay, smooth mortar, set back a little
- The potter's burial wasp (Trypoxylon spec.): brings green spiders to its brood, which then lie in front of the entrance
- The potter digger wasp (Trypoxylon figulus): closes its holes in May, holes have a small hole
In addition, there are numerous species of insects (mainly wasps) that pierce the nest closures of the bees in order to lay their eggs in the nest they have made. The host's brood serves as food for the hatching larvae.
Close holes yourself?
A stable rear wall only allows flying in from the front. However, this construction is not absolutely necessary as long as the insect hotel (€11.33) is also inaccessible to birds on the back. Bees then use both entrances. You can offer the insects a nesting place from the following materials:
- bamboo tubes
- pierced hardwood
- dried stalks of knotweed
- reed
- blocks of clay or bricks
Always make sure that the holes are clean. Cracks lead to injury to bees' wings.
Clean closed holes?
Closed holes in the insect hotel are not uncommon during the breeding season. Sometimes the waterproofing stays in place for longer than a year. Many gardeners then assume that the brood has long been dead and remove the nest closure when cleaning. In this regard, you should know that the larvae of some species of insects take so long to hatch. It is therefore better to leave the seals to themselves. Some bee species remove the material from their predecessors on their own.