I get the point that if you buy a device with the singular goal to maximize a bee population, the author has many valid points.
But there's counter points. The first one being is that most of these products, including the one the author is showing in the opening of the article, are not bee hotels. They are insect hotels.
Parasitic insects are insects. And there's nothing inherently wrong with them. My tubes are filled with solitary bees, wasps stuffing their tube with tiny spiders, bumblebees, a whole bunch of diversity. And yes, there's competition for tubes and parasitic behavior.
Which is all perfectly normal and natural. I photograph insects as a hobby. In the wild, parasitic behavior is the norm. Most caterpillars are dead before they know it, as they're easy prey for parasitic wasps to inject their eggs into. Many insects are covered in mites.
What can I say? Insects have a short and brutal life. Most don't make it to adulthood and that is kind of how it is supposed to be.
This is not to say that many of the tips in the article are bad, they are still good. But not just for bees, they are good tips in general.
The one tip I'd stress the most is the cheap nests being too shallow. In moderate climates where there's an actual winter, don't be afraid to go 30cm deep.
The other thing I'd add is to think of their "habitat" outside the hotel. Digg in a bucket of water and you'll have a mini pond where many will come to drink. Plants the proper flowers, etc.
Weeds are just plants but there are reasons to control them, too - for one we value certain plants over others and certain plants are much more beneficial to ecosystems than others. Too many parasites due to poor design is just a parasite farm which is awfully macabre. I have no sympathy for blood sucking parasites: someone else did all the work and they just come along for the ride. To the flames.
On the other hand, I'll tolerate most spiders (yes, not insects, I know) since they actually put the work into making a web and so on.
Clearly, an insect hotel is not for you. You treat nature as a source of entertainment to cherry pick.
Even if you favor particular insect species, usually because of ridiculous reasons like liking their colors, you seem to miss the point that they're supposed to have enemies.
Why do you think insects lay an incredible amount of eggs? Because 99% will not make it. They're not supposed to make it. If the caterpillars of your favorite butterfly would all survive, there'd be no foliage left anywhere, which in turn would collapse many other things.
Applying human morality to nature is even more ridiculous. Our very own species is a million times worse than the absolute worst parasitic insect.
Is a garden not for me because I choose what to plant? Is a hotel not for me because I choose to evict the guests that lie in wait to suck the other residents' blood? This is not picking and choosing on a global scale, this is picking and choosing who gets to stay in my hotel - some guests are better behaved than others. Some guests increase suffering more than others, too. Parasites are free to find somewhere else.
(I think it's worth noting that your position would be extremely unpopular among pet owners - and I think justifiably so. The issue with parasitism is that it basically exploits the success of another organism without necessarily offering gains to anything else, and that's really not something that should be rewarded. Do we really need to argue about the reality that much of what happens in nature is unnecessarily cruel? Maybe some of it is necessary, like the spiders I will tolerate, to prevent us becoming overwhelmed, but I think that's not entirely true.)
Yes, technically it's your garden and you can optimize it to whatever superficial pleasure it gives you. Just don't confuse that with a love or appreciation for nature as it's mostly about loving yourself.
The very idea extends to pet owners. You domesticate an animal so far that it is basically an extension of yourself. Or, you take a wild animal (bird, fish, turtle, rabbit, etc.) and constrain it for life. You imprison it, prevent it from performing any remotely natural behavior, block it from reproducing...all so that for at best a few minutes per day you can look at it and tell yourself...I really love animals.
You apply all this needless suffering to animals for mere personal entertainment, it serves not a single evolutionary purpose.
And then you turn around to complain about the "suffering" induced by parasites, and that parasites show bad behavior. There's no such thing as bad behavior in nature, it's a man-made concept. A parasite is a parasite evolved to survive and reproduce that way. It just IS. It feeds at the expense of others and it gets preyed on itself by robber flies and birds.
But I bet you love birds. Fun creatures to see. Cheerful. Also mass murderers that kill hundreds of insects, nymphs ("babies") included on any given day, without a care in the world.
Human morality plays no role in this. All of these things are connected and normal. Not just that, they are needed if you don't want plague-like imbalances. Insects are not supposed to have a high success rate.
Your selective shopping in behavior is not only delusional, it's not even consistent. You "tolerate" spiders over parasites. Spiders paralyze their prey, wrap it, then suck out the liquids whilst still alive.
Again, I get it. You want to see "nature" in a way that makes you feel comfortable. It's about you. Not about nature. It's not nature's purpose or problem to make you feel comfortable based on random fabrications in your mind.
I am nature, not separate from it. I choose what gets to stay in my insect hotel, and I do not choose parasites. Does that make you uncomfortable? Sure seems like it. I'd reflect on your final sentence to see that it literally cannot make coherent sense unless you think I am somehow a special case in nature's plan.
Feel free to have your insect hotel infested with parasites. I'm sure your guests will be grateful instead of suffering.
I already said that you can do whatever you want in your garden. I am merely engaging with delusional justifications that make no sense, are inconsistent, selfish and shows a complete lack of understanding of how nature works.
I'm not gatekeeping, I'm having a discussion. I'm merely providing counter points against the common god complex people have in "managing" nature, whilst this leads to more plagues and less biodiversity, not more.
I lost a chunk of my remaining faith in humanity when I heard that in the US some (many?) people think clovers of all things are weeds, after being successfully branded as such by weedkiller companies (whose products indiscriminately kill non-grass species, so easier to just redefine “weed” as “anything killed by our stuff”)! Clovers are nitrogen fixers for fuck’s sake, massively valuable for any ecosystem including your lawn. Not even going into the whole issue of how horrible an idea monocultural lawns are for all the other reasons…
Fair point, although I suppose most weeds aren't parasitic so disvaluing them is quite a bit more prone to errors based entirely on aesthetics. I'd fully agree that basing ecological decisions on aesthetics is a terrible idea.
A question that show exactly the problem I was trying to explain.
The purpose of an insect hotel is to support insect diversity/populations which is lacking typically in urban areas. Insects in turn doing wonders for plant diversity in the area and attracting birds, for being prey items. An insect hotel is a tool that along with a few other small and simple measures, may make your garden much more wildlife friendly.
The comparison with chicken falls short. People have chicken for their eggs, meat and/or personal entertainment. There's no ecological goal of supporting chicken diversity as they're not exactly in decline, nor do they play any meaningful role in relation to native wildlife.
Chicken are for you, a utility. An insect hotel is not for you, it's to help insects and related wildlife. Insects are not pets, you should not cherry pick them with zero understanding of how the dynamics work. 99.99% of insects should die before adulthood, and even adulthood is typically mere days or weeks.
But there's counter points. The first one being is that most of these products, including the one the author is showing in the opening of the article, are not bee hotels. They are insect hotels.
Parasitic insects are insects. And there's nothing inherently wrong with them. My tubes are filled with solitary bees, wasps stuffing their tube with tiny spiders, bumblebees, a whole bunch of diversity. And yes, there's competition for tubes and parasitic behavior.
Which is all perfectly normal and natural. I photograph insects as a hobby. In the wild, parasitic behavior is the norm. Most caterpillars are dead before they know it, as they're easy prey for parasitic wasps to inject their eggs into. Many insects are covered in mites.
What can I say? Insects have a short and brutal life. Most don't make it to adulthood and that is kind of how it is supposed to be.
This is not to say that many of the tips in the article are bad, they are still good. But not just for bees, they are good tips in general.
The one tip I'd stress the most is the cheap nests being too shallow. In moderate climates where there's an actual winter, don't be afraid to go 30cm deep.
The other thing I'd add is to think of their "habitat" outside the hotel. Digg in a bucket of water and you'll have a mini pond where many will come to drink. Plants the proper flowers, etc.