Leafcutter bees need a cozy place to call home. When you order the Bee Starter Kit from Kind Bee Farms, it comes with a full-size bee house where your leafcutter bees will nest in paper tubes and lay eggs. While the bee house serves a functional purpose, it also adds a lot of charm to your garden. If you want to make your bee house a focal point, consider decorating it. This is a fun project you can do with your family and adds to the enjoyment of caring for leafcutter bees.
Here are four fun ways to personalize and decorate the bee house from your friends at Kind Bee Farms!
Why Decorate Your Bee House?
Our leafcutter bee house is a wooden box made from sturdy acacia wood, which has a natural sandy colour. While this wood looks great on its own, decorating the bee house can personalize the experience of caring for leafcutter bees and is a fun way to stay occupied while you wait for your bee cocoons to hatch!
Decorating your bee house can also create more enjoyment for the bees. They have colour receptors for shades of blue, green, and purple, so if you use them in your design, your bees will locate their home much easier! Just make sure to use a weather-proof sealant on the bee house after you finish decorating to prevent all your hard work from being ruined by the weather.
If you already have a bee house from the previous year that you have not decorated, this is the perfect project to do as you await the next growth season. If your bee house is new, make sure to store your bees in a cool, dark area to give you more time to decorate (Note: this should only be done if your bee cocoons are not fully hatched upon arrival. Otherwise, the unhatched bees may die off).
Stain the Wood
If you would like to keep the natural look of your bee house, try using a wood stain on the exterior! Using a stain can warm up the lighter shade of acacia wood while emphasizing the grain. This is a simple and easy project to complete, and the natural appearance is perfect for a garden.
Use Colourful Paints!
If you want to be more expressive with your design, paint your bee house instead of staining it. You can add patterns, a fun design, stencilling, or stick to a solid colour – the possibilities are endless! Painting the house is also a great project to do with your kids, as it gives you a chance to spend more time together while being creative.
Try Multi-Media
If you enjoy more crafty activities like scrapbooking, you can create a collage-style design on your bee house with multimedia! Using strong craft paste, you can layer botanical prints, pictures, leaves, dried flowers, scrapbook paper, and other craft elements. This type of design is a fun way to get the whole family involved—each of your kids can choose items that reflect their personality while you combine them all together!
Add Stickers and Decals
If you have younger children who want to help decorate the bee house, stickers and decals are a simple and mess-free way to keep them involved. You can even find bee and garden-related stickers to keep the design on theme- just make sure to use a sealant to keep the stickers in place!
Order Your Bee House from Kind Bee Farms
If you plan to order the Bee Starter Kit from Kind Bee Farms, make beekeeping a more fun experience by decorating your bee house. This is a fun activity that your whole family can be a part of, and if you choose the right colours, your bees will love it, too.
Contact us today to learn more about our ordering dates for the Bee Starter Kit and start planning your designs!