Solitary bee hotel

A solitary bee hotel that provides various sized holes for different species of bees to nest and lay eggs, and for those eggs to develop safely in a controlled environment. Paper liners allow for the harvest of the cocoons yearly to help preserve your local bee populations and maybe even increase pollination in your local area! 

Solitary bees (unlike the more well-known honey bee) do not live in colonies, and therefore have no queen (or I suppose more likely is that they have no queen and therefor don't live in colonies, hmm…). With no queen to protect, they don't need to sting a threat to save the queen. An individual solitary bee is a considerably more efficient pollinator than a single honey bee. So saving the solitary bees is saving the food for you! (Yes, I'm aware it's not that simple, but for right now let's pretend!)

From my half-thorough research, the tube sizes provided should be appropriate for a range of local solitary bee species in a range of localities. 

To make the hotel as pictured, you will need: 

2x each of the following:

• 5.6 and 6.6 ID faceplate
• 5.6 and 6.6 ID joiner sleeve
• 5.6 and 6.6 ID endcap
• 6.6 and 7.6 ID faceplate
• 6.6 and 7.6 ID joiner sleeve
• 6.6 and 7.6 ID endcap
• 5.6 and 7.6 ID faceplate
• 5.6 and 7.6 ID joiner sleeve
• 5.6 and 7.6 ID endcap
• (If you know your printer tends to have trouble with tight fitting parts and tolerances, print the ‘looser’ versions of the faceplates and end caps (the joiner sleeves intentionally don't fit tightly, since they are internal and not providing protection from things getting inside the frame). The standard files allow for a 0.1mm tolerance across the entire height of the bee hotel, the ‘looser’ files will add 0.1mm gap per tube set, ie: if you print 6 sets as pictured, you would have a 0.7mm allowance, which is a very wide margin of error [ie: you're using an Ender right out of the box and you've never heard of e-steps, z-offset, or belt tension]. If you know your printer is better than average but not amazing, you could probably print a couple of each of the ‘Looser’ files and the rest in the default versions and save yourself some sanding and a headache during assembly). 
• There is a folder of ‘Joiner sleeves - Tighter’ This refers to how tightly the tubes fit into the sleeve, not how tightly the sleeves fit into the frame (as mentioned above, the sleeves fit very loosely in the frame, so you should not have an issue there). I'd recommend printing one once your tubes are printed and testing it, or just stick with the standard version and shim it if needed to fit the tubes tighter - these are inside the frame so no one (not even the bees) will see if you shim them with a piece of wax paper or a scrap of filament.

4x each of the following: 

• 5.6 and 6.6 ID half length tubes
• 6.6 and 7.6 ID half length tubes
• 5.6 and 7.6 ID half length tubes

1x each of the following: 

• Frame - tabbed side
• Frame - non-tabbed side

Additional materials: 4x zipties (anything less than 5mm width), 2x screws for mounting (mounting holes in the model have a diameter of 5mm), and wax paper if you want the option of sustainably harvesting the cocoons.  

*Optional, but highly suggested: There are 3 files labeled ‘Roller for x.x ID holes’. These are cylinders that I used to wrap wax paper around, and then slid them into the corresponding holes. It's probably possible to make the paper liners without these, but I didn't even bother trying. I suggest printing two of each in vase mode with a fairly decent brim, and then finding a way to join them without adding too much to the outer diameter (I jammed wooden skewers inside of them, which you can see in the below assembly guide).  If you plan on using these, I suggest printing one and checking the fit (WITH wax paper wrapped around it). If  it's too tight, you can scale the X + Y down a few percent as needed. 

Printing notes and suggestions: 

• Whatever your normal print setting are should be fine, though I would suggest printing one tube set and one set of faceplate, joiner sleeve, and endcap to check your fitment. You will likely save yourself some headache down the road if you slow your print speed down (IIRC I reduced my ‘Small perimeters' speed down to 75% for the tube sets, and for the rollers in vase mode I went all the way down to 15mm/s with 100% fan, YMMV). 
• Scope out the location you plan on mounting the hotel first (ideally it would receive morning sun, so on the S/SE side of a building/structure in the US and Europe), if you need the mounting tabs on the opposite side from what is provided (see my photos), then you can mirror both frame pieces to get the mounting tabs on the other side (when looking at the hotel from the front-side, the tabs will be on the right if you print them as provided, if you mirror both frame pieces, the tabs will be on the left, if you only mirror one frame piece, you messed up and I can't help you). 
• You can certainly scale the tubes 200% in the Z direction and ignore the joiner sleeves, but they are 175mm tall at full height, and mine got quite wobbly around the 150-160mm mark. Same goes for the rollers, but mine got pretty messy by the 120mm mark.

Assembly: 

Step 0: (Not pictured, because I forgot) Match up each pair of tubes and use a joiner sleeve between them to hold them together. If its too loose, you can put a small piece of wax paper in the joiner sleeve first then slide the tubes in, or reprint the tighter versions, do whatever works. I opted to also put the faceplates on the tubes before I began with the paper liners, but you could probably do it after.

Step 1: If using the rollers, find a way to join them. You can see the wooden skewers I used to jam inside them (I stuck in however many fit without forcing, then shaved one down to add just enough friction that it held both sides firmly without splitting the rollers).

Step 2: Decide how you're going to measure your wax paper. I tore a piece of wax paper off the roll a bit longer than the rollers. Then I took each roller in turn and rolled the end of the paper around it, marked how much paper it took to make a full wrap plus a few mm extra, measured it, then cut 24 pieces for each of the three sizes. Eye balling it and tearing the paper will probably work just as well. 

Step 3: Wrap the wax paper snuggly around the rollers. I found this to much easier than I expected. I started at one end and the rest will mostly follow suit with little effort. I don't think I need to go into too much more detail about how to wrap paper around a stick…

Step 4: Push roller and paper through both tube sets (with joiner sleeve holding them together). I did not use tape on the liners, as I didn't want to lose any diameter, and also because I wanted the liners to expand to fill the holes once the roller was removed. Feel free to tape it if some inner voice is telling you to.

Step 6: Pull roller out, leaving paper liner in place. Repeat, a lot.

Step 7: Once all liners are in-place, cut off all the excess wax paper sticking out of the ends (a sharp razor will help here), then put the end caps on each set of tubes. Then choose one of the frame pieces, and insert the zipties as shown. 

Step 8: While fighting with the ends of the zipties repeatedly getting in the way, insert all the tube sets. I found it easier to put the last set in a gap between two neighboring sets rather than against the edge of the frame, but feel free to do whatever feels right. 

Step 9: Gently slide in the last tube set. These are snug (to prevent predatory insects from getting in between them), you may need to sand down the faceplate and endcap of one of them if your printer isn't well calibrated (If you expect this to be problem, you can print the ‘looser’ files). 

Step 10: Once all the tube sets are fitted and seated correctly, pull the tails of the zipties through further, as seen on the right side of the above photo (further than that would probably be best, but you'll figure it out as you go, I have faith in you).

Step 11: Insert the tails of the zipties in the holes of the other frame piece from the inside to the outside. You'll know if you do it wrong, so just wing it. Then tediously do the same to the other side before zipping the zip ties. 

Step 12: Once the zipties are through both sides, adjust everything accordingly to fit, make sure both frame pieces are seated appropriately, then zipper your zipties and snip off the excess (only an absolute monster leaves the tails on their zipties). 

Step 13: Mount your bee hotel in a place where it will receive morning sun (in the US and Europe this would be S/SE), with a slight pitch so the back is a bit higher than the front (to help prevent water from getting in the tubes and to help the water leave the tubes if it does manage to get in), most smartphones have a level app you could use, or like we do on our honey bee hives, use a marble/golf ball/ping-pong ball/carefully balanced coin to ensure it rolls towards the front when placed on top, or just throw caution to the wind and eyeball it. 

Now that you've made it this far, no, I haven't the faintest idea if this will work. All of my casual research suggests that it should. As of posting this model, mine has only been up for about a week, and it's been raining non-stop, so I haven't bothered to check. I would say I'll update here if/when I get a tenant, but I wont say that, because I don't trust myself to keep my word…. but I'll try. 

And yes, I realize that there are differing opinions on not only providing homes for solitary/native bees (yes, yes, I know they've been doing it successfully without us for longer than we can imagine and they don't need our help, but neither do cats, those heathens aren't even technically domesticated and that hasn't stopped us), but also whether a plastic house is appropriate, but it will either work, or it won't. I'm not an expert and I'm not claiming that my model is a magical solution to any problem that may or may not be occurring. I also keep honey-bees and I enjoy it, so this seemed like a fun challenge and experiment. If you feel inclined to try it out and join me, great!, if not, that's great too!