Reclaimed Wood Bee Box

In this instructable I will show you how to build a hive for wild bees from reclaimed wood. This will bring more bees to your garden and help polonaise flowers and plants in your garden. This is an easy cheap project that can be done in just an hour

For this project I used 2 old bed ribs and a piece of old ply wood from my grandad's shed


Please vote for me in the reclaimed wood competition.

For this project you will need:

•two length 90cm, width 7cm and breadth 1.7cm bits of pine ( I got mine from a bed)

•Some small steel nails

•a 5mm thick sheet of ply wood

If you want a hinge for the roof buy a hinge or use two wire staples and some copper wire or string



Extra stuff:

If you are not using treated wood then you will require some water seal or other similar product that prevents wood from rotting

•A saw (a chop saw CAN be used but ONLY for the pine wood)

•A hammer (any hammer will do)

•A power drill and a drill bit just smaller than the nails (this is for pilot holes it just stops the wood from splitting)


•A RASP file (for fixing the saw cuts and edges)


•A measuring tape


•A tri square

First mark out a 20cm by 7cm rectangle on the ply wood. After you have done that cut it out with a saw

Mark out a 23.5cm length on one of the pine planks then make sure it is straight using a tri square after that cut along the line with a saw ( you can use the chop saw for this one). Once you have a 23.5cm board place it on the remaining board and draw a line then cut two more 23.5 cm boards

Cut two strips of ply wood for straps then hold the boards together and drill through the ply into the pine as depicted in the fifth picture in this step then nail the boards together

Get the second board and measure in 14cm then use the tri square to draw a line after that mark a second line at 45 degrees of the first line after that saw along the line (i recommend you use a chop saw for this but a hand saw will do it but it will be more difficult.

After cutting the first angled section place the section on top of the plank so the angles line up then draw a line along the back of the first section (this saves you from doing another angled cut) then use the saw to cut along the line

To make the front just cut another 23.5cm section and then cut another section about half the width of the first section to do this you must cut long ways which is quite difficult

Don't worry your almost there all you need to do is drill in to the wood and put some nails in

First start by drilling 4 holes on each side of the back board then put nails in them so they are just peeking out the other side then line up the two side sections and hammer the nails through

Secondly drill 4 holes through both of the front panels then nail them to the side pieces be sure that there are no gaps between the panels

Installing the floor. To instal the floor just friction fit it by hammering it into place (adjust until flush with the bottom of the walls

Drill the holes in the front of the box make sure that there are some large ones and small ones

To build the roof simply measure an extra centimetre around the box on to a piece of ply wood then draw a line over where you marked out after that cut out the rectangle you have drawn. Then pin the piece of ply to the walls and you have a bee box.

Thank you for reading this far and while you are here could you please vote for me in the 'Reclaimed Wood' competition

By building this you are helping a disappearing
species so thank you :-)

Thank you for reading this far and while you are here could you please vote for me in the 'Reclaimed Wood' competition

By building this you are helping a disappearing
species so thank you :-)