School’s bug hotel attracts insects

RANGITOTO students have used recycled materials to make a bug hotel to attract helpful insects into the school gardens.

Old ceramic pipes, milk cartons, bricks and the roof of a dog kennel were all part of the creative construction.

“We are making a bug hotel to attract bugs we want, to keep the balance in nature,” said student Lucy Duder.

Other kids liked that it provided a refuge for the good critters.

“It is important to have a bug hotel because some good bugs get eaten by birds”, said Peata Fagan. Dallas Williamson said it would be “somewhere safe for good bugs”.

Teacher Stacey Reynolds said they wanted to bring their topic of sustainability to life – and the project had started with an interest in pest control before evolving further.

“We walked around our green space at school, and we looked at what we could see, and what we could find. Being rural country kids, they were interested in pest management – such as trapping possums,” Stacey said.

“We need to control pests, so they don’t eat our native birds” student James Lynch said.

They began by making “tracking tunnels” in the green space.

“We made our tracking tunnels out of recycled materials ... like milk bottles, and we cut the ends off.

“We fitted them together and we covered them in black rubbish bags and used ice-cream lids and sponges with food colouring.

“Then we put the food on top, so the little pests or bugs came in to get the food. They walked on the food colouring, and then the white paper at either end. We were able to look at the white paper in the morning to see what we found,” Stacey said.

They used Department of Conservation printouts to help identify the footprints. Although they hoped to see evidence of stoats and ferrets, they mainly got smaller pests. Not even a possum.

“We made one big tracking panel out of cardboard to try and get a possum, but we only got rats, mice, one lizard, and lots of bugs.”

The project then moved from learning about pest control, to attracting helpful species.

“That sparked the idea that if we made a bug hotel that would get more bugs into our green space.

“What do they like to live in? What do they like to eat? That kind of stuff. We used recycled pallets and an old dog kennel roof. And we found little tunnels in our planting shed at school.”

After constructing the bug motel, they added finishing touches: plant material resting in the old teracotta pipes. They used moss to attract ladybugs. Bamboo with little holes, and pinecones, were placed to tempt native bees.

Lastly, students walked around the leaf litter near the bug motel, to see what kinds of insects they had in the area and made notes.

They will return at the end of term to see whether the bug motel has been successful in its aims, from a scientific perspective.

“It will probably be an ongoing process,” Stacey said.