3 ms·

I'm not convinced an insect hotel does anything useful. Ours and any others I've seen get taken over by spiders and webs just about instantly. And the spiders h

by prawn 5y ago

I'm not convinced an insect hotel does anything useful. Ours and any others I've seen get taken over by spiders and webs just about instantly. And the spiders here already have enough places to live!

fleddr 5y ago
This just shows you still have the wrong mindset in wanting to manage outcomes. The goal of an insect hotel is not to maximize insects you like to see or think are pretty. The goal is to create a habitat normally found in nature itself. A place to nest or even overwinter. Because our concrete jungle has few of such places. After creating the place, you let it play out. In your case, spiders seem to dominate it. So what? Spiders are a valuable part of the ecosystem. If they become too numerous, birds will thin the herd as will parasitic wasps. In my garden, I do get a fair amount of various bee species in the hotel. 80% of them won't have a successful life cycle due to other predatory insects. Not only is that normal, it's supposed to happen. Insects have a ridiculously numerous offspring. I also see the opposite happening. Thin-waisted predatory wasps hunting baby spiders, stuffing them in their hotel room for their larvae. Anyway, if you still believe the spiders are out of control in your place, it means your garden has too few songbirds. In an urban environment, highly common songbirds and spider wasps are the top predators of spiders.
- prawn 5y ago
  Not sure where you live but I'm in Australia. In Europe or North America, I hear virtually no birds. In Australia and including in my suburban backyard, there are loads of birds - songbirds, parrots/lorikeets/cockatoos, magpies. I have an acacia (with parasitic growths that birds visit for berries) and loads of fruit trees among other things that attract birds. We have no shortage of birds. But this is Australia and there are many spiders - trees, ground, adapted to the urban environment, etc. Huntsmen, red backs, black house spiders, white-tailed, orb weavers, wolf spiders, mouse spiders, etc. Every alcove or cavity or pipe has a spider. Go out with a headlamp at night, and the eyes of wolf spiders reflect back at you from everywhere. Spiders live in all the rear-view mirrors of my cars, and under the rear wiper blades. Multiple spiders live in the frame of each window and sliding door, at all times. From my travels, I'm convinced we have a far more noticeable urban spider population than say Europe or the US. The urban environment here is flooded with spiders. Corrugated iron is perfect for them, creating a cavity every inch or two the length of a building. Multiple spiders live on every chair of my outdoor setting. Not much of the back verandah does not have continually refreshed spider detritus hanging underneath eaves. If I turn a spadeful in the garden when it's dry, multiple wolf spiders emerge and try to resettle. Admittedly our gifted spider hotel is small (size of a box of cereal), but it only takes one spider to crawl a scrappy web across it, and it's not going to be of much use to insects. In my 40+ years, I've found one wasp nest with entombed spiders (mostly large orb weavers). But you can't move around here without encountering a spider. Maybe an insect hotel stands a better chance elsewhere in the world, but here it is trivial for every cavity to be controlled even by one spider, and I'm pretty confident spiders are not in desperate need of more housing opportunities.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    Hah, I admit that's a radically different situation. Aussie wildlife is a world on its own. I'm honestly not sure what it would require in your place to stimulate insect diversity, probably best to use local expertise, or accept that it's you being a guest in a spider world.
    - prawn 5y ago
      We have loads of bugs. I just think the insect hotels are a gimmick here. If it wasn't a spider in there, it would be an earwig, and they're already everywhere. Bees and heat are probably my issues in the garden - lack of pollinators and dried stamen. Some vegetables have gone from trivial to grow, to can't fruit properly at all, in the space of 2-3 years. I filmed the other month in a garden that was absolutely flooded with bees. I'm working on copying some of the flowering plants they had. Saw a blue-banded bee there for the first time in my life: https://bit.ly/3i7kgiy https://bit.ly/3i7kgiy
      - fleddr 5y ago
        Fair enough, sounds like due to the wildlife itself or the climate, an insect hotel is of little use there. I'm really happy that you're persisting in making the garden wildlife friendly, compliments.

by prawn 5y ago

I'm not convinced an insect hotel does anything useful. Ours and any others I've seen get taken over by spiders and webs just about instantly. And the spiders here already have enough places to live!

fleddr 5y ago

This just shows you still have the wrong mindset in wanting to manage outcomes. The goal of an insect hotel is not to maximize insects you like to see or think are pretty. The goal is to create a habitat normally found in nature itself. A place to nest or even overwinter. Because our concrete jungle has few of such places. After creating the place, you let it play out. In your case, spiders seem to dominate it. So what? Spiders are a valuable part of the ecosystem. If they become too numerous, birds will thin the herd as will parasitic wasps. In my garden, I do get a fair amount of various bee species in the hotel. 80% of them won't have a successful life cycle due to other predatory insects. Not only is that normal, it's supposed to happen. Insects have a ridiculously numerous offspring. I also see the opposite happening. Thin-waisted predatory wasps hunting baby spiders, stuffing them in their hotel room for their larvae. Anyway, if you still believe the spiders are out of control in your place, it means your garden has too few songbirds. In an urban environment, highly common songbirds and spider wasps are the top predators of spiders.

prawn 5y ago
Not sure where you live but I'm in Australia. In Europe or North America, I hear virtually no birds. In Australia and including in my suburban backyard, there are loads of birds - songbirds, parrots/lorikeets/cockatoos, magpies. I have an acacia (with parasitic growths that birds visit for berries) and loads of fruit trees among other things that attract birds. We have no shortage of birds. But this is Australia and there are many spiders - trees, ground, adapted to the urban environment, etc. Huntsmen, red backs, black house spiders, white-tailed, orb weavers, wolf spiders, mouse spiders, etc. Every alcove or cavity or pipe has a spider. Go out with a headlamp at night, and the eyes of wolf spiders reflect back at you from everywhere. Spiders live in all the rear-view mirrors of my cars, and under the rear wiper blades. Multiple spiders live in the frame of each window and sliding door, at all times. From my travels, I'm convinced we have a far more noticeable urban spider population than say Europe or the US. The urban environment here is flooded with spiders. Corrugated iron is perfect for them, creating a cavity every inch or two the length of a building. Multiple spiders live on every chair of my outdoor setting. Not much of the back verandah does not have continually refreshed spider detritus hanging underneath eaves. If I turn a spadeful in the garden when it's dry, multiple wolf spiders emerge and try to resettle. Admittedly our gifted spider hotel is small (size of a box of cereal), but it only takes one spider to crawl a scrappy web across it, and it's not going to be of much use to insects. In my 40+ years, I've found one wasp nest with entombed spiders (mostly large orb weavers). But you can't move around here without encountering a spider. Maybe an insect hotel stands a better chance elsewhere in the world, but here it is trivial for every cavity to be controlled even by one spider, and I'm pretty confident spiders are not in desperate need of more housing opportunities.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Hah, I admit that's a radically different situation. Aussie wildlife is a world on its own. I'm honestly not sure what it would require in your place to stimulate insect diversity, probably best to use local expertise, or accept that it's you being a guest in a spider world.
  - prawn 5y ago
    We have loads of bugs. I just think the insect hotels are a gimmick here. If it wasn't a spider in there, it would be an earwig, and they're already everywhere. Bees and heat are probably my issues in the garden - lack of pollinators and dried stamen. Some vegetables have gone from trivial to grow, to can't fruit properly at all, in the space of 2-3 years. I filmed the other month in a garden that was absolutely flooded with bees. I'm working on copying some of the flowering plants they had. Saw a blue-banded bee there for the first time in my life: https://bit.ly/3i7kgiy https://bit.ly/3i7kgiy
    - fleddr 5y ago
      Fair enough, sounds like due to the wildlife itself or the climate, an insect hotel is of little use there. I'm really happy that you're persisting in making the garden wildlife friendly, compliments.