Bat Houses for Sale and Their Placement

If you have a problem with mosquitoes and other insects in your yard, you may want to consider constructing a bat house or two. Bats are one of the best ways to control insects because this is what they eat. One bat can consume up to 1,200 insects per hour. If you have a couple of bats living in your bat house, and they feed every night, you won’t have a mosquito problem any longer.

How to Build a Bat House

You can construct a suitable bat house from plywood. There are plenty of excellent instructions on the internet, or you can pick up a book at your local hardware store to learn how to build your bat house. A few tips to keep in mind when building a bat house, though. Make sure that you use a low odor paint or stain, water based works best, because bats will shy away from the strong smell of most paints and stains. You will also want to make sure to paint it a dark color to match the tree that you will hang the bat house in. You can also purchase a pre-made bat house if you prefer.

Where to Hang Your Bat House

When you hang your bat house, bat house placement is important. Find a tall, thick tree and hang it as high in the tree as you can without risking injury to yourself. Bats will look for large trees because these tend to have holes in them that the bats like to sleep inside. They like to be high off of the ground away from any predators while they sleep, too. Be sure when you choose your bat house placement to attach the bat house securely to the tree because if it doesn’t feel secure, they won’t stay in it.

Once your bat house is constructed and hung, leave it alone and leave the bats alone. It is okay to watch them from a distance, but they won’t come close to you in most cases and if you want them to work on the insects in your yard, it is best if you aren’t outside offering your encouragement. Bats like to work alone.

How Many Bat Houses Should You Install?

Now the question may come up when you are first planning to place a bat house in your yard: how many bat houses should I install in my yard to make sure they are successful? Well, the answer to that question is just one. There is absolutely no need to install more than one bat house in your yard for if you design it well enough, you can get roughly fifty bats into one bat house and if you have a large or small yard that should be perfect for you.

There are some concessions though, if you live on a farm and own multiple acres of land you may want to have at the most, two bat houses and place them far apart from one another. This way, you will be covering all of your land and ensuring that all of the insects all over your farm are taken care of.

Are Bats Dangerous?

Bats are nothing to fear. Many people think that bats are prone to be rabid but this simply isn’t true. There have been only 40 rabid bats in all of the United States reported in the past 50 years. That comes out to less than a half a percent of all of the bats in North America.

Bats are not only good to have around, they are necessary for the control of the insect population in most of the country, and many of the species of bats are nearing extinction. Help a bat out. Build or buy him a bat house so that he can live in peace. He’ll return the favor by helping you get rid of those pesky mosquitoes.

2 Chamber Bat House from www.NatureGifts.com $29.95