“Insects, worms, and other small animals that carry out vital functions for life on earth have declined by 45 percent average over 35 years, threatening human, water quality and food supplies…”
-Steve Connor, “Vital invertebrates decline 45 percent, study finds,” independent.co.uk, July 2014
RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Insect hotels are homes for crawling and flying insects. Mostly made from recycled products usually found in our backyards. Different materials cater to different insects (which prefer lodge looking hotels. Most hotels are made with wood boards with insect-friendly materials inside such as straw, cork, sticks, or pinecones.
BRIEF INTRODUCTION, AND ISSUE RESEARCH
These hotels provide safety for insects while in hibernation over the winter. Lack of dead wood causes a lot of insects like wild bees, crickets, and ladybugs to not have a place to live.
Building insect hotels helps insects like ladybugs or flying pollinators which helps humans in the end. They benefit the environment and gardens. Insects that live in insect hotels are wasps, dragonflies, beetles, moths, spiders, frogs and many types of bees which are great pollinators of tomatoes, blueberries, cranberries, clover, plus more.
With our insect hotel we would like to build a home for a variety of insects. We will make a structure that is aesthetically pleasing and give the all insects a view of the world around them as well as a new home. We not only want to make a home for the insects at the top of the food chain but at the bottom as well. Letting these vital insects become extinct is not an option, we must save the insects that are the prey because without them the insect predators would die. As a result this would affecting the environment tremendously. Some people see spiders as an efficient pest control, but what they don’t understand is that we need those bugs. For example, spiders feed off of insects such as : crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, insect eggs, other spiders, tadpoles, flies, ants, and bird eggs. If we don’t start by protecting these types of insects the environment will suffer. Crickets and grasshoppers like to live in the grass. Beetles feel most comfortable living in leaves, logs, rocks or darkness as most insect live do. Flies love to live in trash and ants usually live underground in the dirt. In order to make their stay comfortable in our insect motel we will incorporate things that they all like.
FINAL THOUGHTS/ REFLECTION
For this project the objective was to make an insect motel for insect throughout the winter. My solution was to make an insect hotel for insects that were eaten by spiders. To solve this problem I created a house that is being supported my fours longer pieces of wood. From this project I have learned that wood shop isn’t my favorite form of sculpture and that my skills in this class has grown more than I thought it did. Also I have learned that the key to working with wood is measurements. Based on the feedback of my peers if I could I would further my project bydecorating the outside of the insect motel more to hide some my mistakes. From this project I took away that I should trust my ideas more and have more faith in myself and not focus on outside opinions as much.
MAINTENANCE
For the maintenance of the insect motel simply remove the bottom of the insect motel which is made of chicken wire.