Skip to main content

IKEA wants you to build these tiny homes for bees

Bee awesome and make this tiny home.

Two days ago was World Bee Day — May 20 — and it’s easy to overlook these tiny creatures so essential to life on this planet.

Bees and the service they provide are a vital part of our ecosystem and have been shaping our natural environment for millions of years. But now, because of human impact, their place in this world is threatened.

IKEA and Space 10 joined forces with technology-driven design company Bakken & Bæck and industrial designer Tanita Klein to inspire people to solve this global challenge in a playful and accessible way.

And the result is the Bee Home — a free and open-source design that enables anyone, anywhere to design, customise and fabricate a home to support these tiny pollinators locally.

Bee Home - IKEA + Space 10

Photo: Space10 + Irina Boersma

The Bee Home looks like apartment blocks. The many holes are for bees to live, store food and provide shelter for the eggs they lay, recreating as natural an environment as possible.

One for Solitary Bees

The Bee Home is designed to house solitary bees, which unlike honeybees, do not live in hives or produce honey.

“Solitary bees are great pollinators: a single solitary bee could provide as much pollination as 120 honeybees. With nearly 90 percent of the world’s flowering plants depending on pollination — including a third of the world’s food supply — solitary bees are vital for life on planet Earth,” it says on the Bee Home project page.

“Every female solitary bee is a queen. And since every queen gets 20 to 30 offspring, a single Bee Home could give life to hundreds of solitary bees ready to ensure the survival of flowers, trees, animals and us humans.”

“Solitary bees are friendly — they don’t produce honey and therefore have nothing to protect. They only sting if trod on and are safe to keep around kids and pets.”

Make a Bee Home in 3 steps

#1 Design

Design your very own Bee Home in a few minutes. Just select size, visual style and desired placement, like a rooftop, balcony or garden — or play around with the shuffle button. Your design will instantly update.

(I played around with the design and in a few minutes, customised this 2-feet, 5-storey standing Bee Home, pictured here.)

design process
#2 Fabricate

Download the design files for free. Then, either DIY or locate a makerspace with a CNC milling machine to get it fabricated.

#3 Place

Once assembled, place your Bee Home facing the morning sun and within 300m of local flowers. Solitary bees usually won’t travel further than that.

Bee Home - IKEA + Space 10

Photo: Space10 + Brendan-Austin

No maintenance is required besides a quick cleaning every third year. In fact, once you put it up, you should just leave it be.

Visit Space10 for more details and start giving the bees back their homes.

The post IKEA wants you to build these tiny homes for bees appeared first on IKEA Hackers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SKÅDIS: 5 ways to make the IKEA pegboard even better

IKEA introduced its own pegboard system, SKÅDIS, two years ago and I’d say it’s one of the best systems IKEA launched in recent years. I love how super customisable it is, with a growing range of accessories that help keep things organized. It works everywhere, in your wardrobe to bathroom . Probably anywhere you have a flat surface to hang it up. Photo: IKEA.com SKÅDIS pegboard system See it on IKEA.com But no matter how perfect a system, you can trust IKEA hackers to improve on the SKÅDIS. And they’ve settle these 5 issues you may have faced with the handy IKEA pegboard. Read on for their fixes. 5 IKEA SKÅDIS issues and fixes #1 Expensive hooks? You’ll need quite a number of hooks and accessories to fill up the SKÅDIS pegboard, and Kenyer was shocked at how quickly they all added up. So he figured he could make his own hooks to save cost. Photo: Kenyer Over at Instructables , he shows us how to twist copper wires into the SKÅDIS hook shape. It works s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Enjoy Sweet Dreams With These DIY Headboard Ideas

A headboard is one of the last things you see before you fall asleep and one of the first things you see when you wake up. Demonstrate your unique design style by creating your own. Below are some ideas and tips to get you started. Do you think the formula for sleep is on this London bedroom’s headboard? Image: Clifton Interiors Ltd Chalk headboard Create this look with a can of black chalkboard paint. Almost any type of wall – drywall, plaster, wood, brick or concrete – will work, as long is it is properly prepped. Chalkboard paint is easy to apply, dries fast and can be cleaned with soap and water. But you’re not limited to the color black – chalkboard paint comes in just about every color. If you don’t want to use paint, consider chalkboard contact paper – and yes, you can use chalk on it. An Edmonton hockey-themed room. Image: Cameron Homes Hockey goal headboard For the ultimate hockey fan, nothing beats a hockey goal headboard. Complete the scene with a team blank...
Post a Comment
Read more

A beautiful design idea for the IVAR cabinet with doors

A wall of IVAR cabinets with doors engraved is astonishingly captivating. Because IVAR is real solid wood (unlike a lot of flat-pack cupboards), it makes a great blank canvas for CNC machining work and engraving. IKEA items used: IKEA IVAR cabinets in 30mm (12″) and 50mm (20″) depths. IVAR cabinet | IKEA.com Other materials and tools: CNC Router How to engrave the IVAR cabinet with doors: Build a wall of IVAR cabinets to your preference. It’s not too difficult to shorten some in order to fill a wall exactly. I shortened the top row to 695mm and reduced the depth of the middle column to 40mm to create a 50/40/30 sequence so that I didn’t block the window but maximised storage capacity. Take a drawing, trace it in Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator into a black-only flat design. You can simplify the path at this point to reduce the time needed to engrave. Chop up the drawing in Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator into door-sized sections. Save as an SVG. Import the ...
Post a Comment
Read more