Maggie Evans Bees are animals that we should give a lot of gratitude and appreciation. A third of what we consume is the direct result of these insects’ excellent work ethic. About 80% of all global pollination is due to the tiny but fierce workforce’s tireless efforts. Sadly, in cultivating our gardens and building our homes, we gave a massive punch to the sustenance of these furry pollinators. The loss of environment due to pesticides and climate change has also speeded a path towards bees’ extermination. Thankfully, IKEA came up with an innovative idea of a center called SPACE10 to correct the direction path. In collaboration with a designer Tanita Klein and a design studio Bakken and Baeck, SPACE10 began the Bee Home project – an online hive creator where users can get free designs.
Tools are not needed to construct the home. The site also offers an interactive map where you can fin Bee Home designs all over the world. One of the project’s vital goals is to present people with creative and exciting alternatives in creating beehives and giving back our comrades. Designers share that this idea is accessible and flexible through open-source design rules. Every individual is empowered to fabricate and create their own, unique Bee Home locally. To explain why bees need a home – one bee, can fly a lot of miles per day, 15 miles per hour, and its wings move 11,400 times a minute. All of that movement is exhausting for such a dedicated worker; a more significant amount of places to rest would help to lighten the load. Safety is another crucial factor. These tiny homes are meant to offer a bit of shelter for bees to preserve them from harm like moisture interfering with their pollination process. This project might help solitary bees, who don’t live in hives. They are surprising pollinators as a single solitary bee can provide as much pollination as 120 honeybees – as SPACE10 shares. Each solitary bee is a queen. Each queen gets 20 to 30 offspring, so one Bee Home might give life to hundreds if not thousands of solitary bees, ready to ensure the survival of trees, flowers, animals, and humans.
Most probably, Bee Homes do not need any maintenance. Once a Bee Home is designed, one could download all the files of a free project and share them with maker space.
Once you receive the physical Bee Home, you can put it in place, surrounded by flowers, and leave it be for the next couple of years.
One of the codesigners shares that they’d like people to create a fantastic home for bees that can provide a suitable environment for their generation, the whole being truly easy to assemble, design, and place.
