Talk:Insect hotel

Howdy, great work with this page so far. One thing that can be improved is the style you use for citations, wikipedia has guidelines for them, you can check out that fun stuff at this link Wikipedia:Citing sources AcuteAccusation (talk) 20:24, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Solitary bees

Perhaps useful to mention:

holes can be put in wood between 2 and 15 mm for these bees (so also holes bigger than 8 mm)
the log should be put off the ground, some 1,5 meter high
orientate on south for warmth (in northern hemisphere; on north in the southern hemisphere)

Links:

KVDP (talk) 17:04, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

This wiki-article is adapted from its Dutch wiki-counterpart.

Usefulness of insect hotels

The article currently says (after an an edit war) that “the suitability of these enclosures for butterflies is disputed”. One source reports investigations on the matter, the conclusion being that butterflies don’t use butterfly hotels. No other source cited in the article reports any investigations on the matter. The second source currently cited just asserts that insect hotels are beneficial, which is, I think, insufficient by Wikipedia standards. Can anybody provide other relevant sources? palpalpalpal (talk) 12:08, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The claim that butterfly hotels (or butterfly areas within insect hotels) are 'useless' is not sufficiently supported by the citation - which reports the observations of just one man. Indeed, as far as I can tell, there is insufficient scholarly study available to conclusively demonstrate their effectiveness either way. Nevertheless, dispute over their effectiveness certainly does exist, and this is worthy of inclusion in the article. The Woodland Trust citation, which you refer to above, does not report any investigations, but is clearly sufficient to demonstrate the statement that 'the suitability of these enclosures for butterflies is disputed'. Obscurasky (talk) 12:43, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The first source reports the observations of more than one man :

[…] the North American Butterfly Association http://www.naba.org/ asked its members if they had found that butterflies actually use butterfly houses. Not one member said they had. As a result, NABA came to the conclusion that butterflies don't use these structures. […] The Entomology Department of Penn State University conducted a study to determine butterfly use of boxes from 1995-97 […] The results of the study prompted Robert Snetsinger, one of the entomologists conducting the research, to write, "I have yet to see evidence to support the notion that butterflies actually need or use butterfly houses. My suggestion is, if you want to do something useful for butterflies, build them a mud puddle."

The other source, reporting the observations of zero men and showing no research, is irrelevant to Wikipedia. palpalpalpal (talk) 08:29, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with the name of a category of a subclass of insect hotel

There is a category on Commons that has a name that should be changed. The discussion started at sv:Wikipedia:Wikipediafrågor#Engelska_fråga and it continues on C:Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/07/Category:Mulmholk. Please take part! --Per W (talk) 07:27, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]