Modular Bee cubes

There is another bee house out there which I will eventually make but it takes a long, long time to print. It is a great design.

I decided to take a different approach and go with modular housing. And make something that could be printed quickly.

Modular housing, you ask?

Yup, mix and match boxes with hexagonal opening of different size within a standard cube size.

The ones labelled honeycomb can be printed as is. you can make as many as you want and then custom build a frame and hanger out of a Cedar fence picket.

The one that is labelled 25x25x3 cube will be useless unless you do some printing tricks. Here is what you need to to.

1. Place the box so the 3 inch dimension is the height.
2. Set your infill as honeycomb
3. Go into your slicer setting and set your top layers to zero.
4. Change your infill to a percent. I used 10, 15, and 20% to make three different hole sizes for different types of wild bees.
5. If you want a little visual variety, you can scale the cube, or simply run out of filament twice like I did to get next cubes of different depths.
6. After printing 4, I glued them into a cube, you align them any way you want and use any number you want.
7. Next, cut your wood and glue and nail it together as a box frame. Don't nail into the plastic.
8. Add a back that is taller than you wood box and drill a hole in it for a nail or screw.

Walla! You have your first Bee Box Modular nest box.

The GCODE files I uploaded are for PLA on a Prusa MK3.

On the Honeycomb files, the one with the largest hole is likely bigger than most bugs would be interested in. Be forewarned!

The wood frame helps to protect the boxes and their inhabitants from the cold, winds, and sun.