There may be enough useful insects living in insect-hoses in the orchard. Ukrainian horticulturists often look for different ways to attract wild insects to their plots.
One of the most popular ways to do it is to install the so called “hostels” or “insect-hoses”. They often look like small houses with lots of cracks for different insects such as bees, lady-birds, ichneumon flies, etc to live in.
Nowadays there are about 20 insect-houses in the UApple orchard. Not only bees. wasps and bumble-bees can be included into the list of useful insects. For example, lady-birds do away with plant-louse, ticks and eats 300 caterpillars during a season. UApple horticulturists try to create favourable conditions for different wild insects as they contribute greatly to increasing pollination and as a result obtaining better yield. According to the comments of Andrey Yarmak, an economist from the investment department, natural pollinaters considerably increase the yield and its quality. The average losses caused by under-pollination according to his estimates reach 30 thousand UAH from each hectare in intensive apple orchards of Ukraine. Pollination of full value is the pledge of fruit quality and rich yield.
The idea of creating insect-hoses is not new. Insect-houses of different kinds have been used in European countries for many years.