I have tried to make my balcony more insect-friendly, mainly thinking about bats and (solitary) bees needing a place to crash for the winter, but this did not go exactly as I intended. While the bee-flowers were a huge hit, the bee-hotel was not a succes because it is still uninhabited. The same seems to be true for the bat-mobile (actually it’s more of a bat-cave, should have called it that instead). From as close a distance as I dare examine it only spiders seem to be living there.
This could also be because of the killer (formerly: killers) also living on the balcony. The cat(s) ate quite a lot of the mosquitos and flies. In one case, Betty ate an entire bee to leave only its wings in the dirt. Could have been a fly, but the wings looked like a bee’s to me. Don’t even ask me how, but she seemed content with her achievement. She always does, even if she is too stupid to catch the huge mosquitos in my room and instead tries to catch fruit flies with an open paw. The fruit flies always win.
