If you want to cultivate your garden in a species-rich and biologically balanced way, you would do well to promote beneficial insects such as ladybirds. The best way to do this is to offer them an appropriate habitat and thereby encourage them to reproduce.
How to create a nesting aid for ladybugs?
To help ladybugs reproduce, offer natural garden design, flowering plants such as dandelions and marigolds, and hiding places for overwintering. Ant control and avoiding chemical sprays are also important.
What ladybugs need
To help ladybugs reproduce in the garden, you should offer them certain things and spare them others. The following things are on the positive list:
- Carry out garden design that is as natural and rich in plants and animals as possible
- Cultivate certain flowering plants that serve as a secondary food source for ladybirds: dandelions, chives, fennel, caraway, marigolds, dill, corn poppies)
- Creating hiding places for overwintering
What you can do to not make it more difficult for ladybirds to settle and reproduce is something like:
- Keeping ants in check (because they defend aphids)
- Do not use chemical sprays
A garden design that naturally combines as many plants and animals as possible also offers better conditions for ladybugs. In a diverse biotope they find a much richer supply of food than in a garden that is subject to human design ideas, where nothing is allowed to grow freely and where toxic pesticides or insecticides are used. If the feeding conditions are favorable, the ladybirds are of course more willing to stay and are also in better shape for overwintering and reproduction in the following year.
A nest made for ladybugs
You cannot speak of nesting aids for ladybirds because they do not nest during reproduction. Rather, the females lay their eggs on the undersides of leaves or trunks, where the larvae are then left to fend for themselves. They have to hatch and develop on their own; there is no parental culture for ladybirds.
Nevertheless, you can promote the reproduction of ladybirds. If you follow the measures mentioned above, you're actually already there. The better the general conditions for the beetles, the more likely they are to overwinter in place and reproduce next spring.
Above all, offer them suitable shelter for the cold season: Leave the leaves lying in a pile in the fall and, if you don't already have a natural stone wall in the garden, build a pile of stones. The beetles find ideal conditions for successful overwintering in warm leaves and in cracks between stones.
