3D-printed BeeBox provides home to bumble bee colonies

Dr Philip Donkersley, an environmental scientist and invertebrate expert at Lancaster University, had the idea for the BeeBox after recognising the need for more bumblebee nesting sites.

“One of my biggest bugbears about bee conservation is that we are always planting more food for them, which is great, but rarely doing any work on providing nesting sites for wild bees.

“Finding suitable habitat and in particular nesting sites can be an issue for bumblebee queens in the spring. These bee boxes can help to address that for both rural and urban areas.”

The BeeBox has been through five years of development to perfect the design. An early iteration was embedded with a webcam to help researchers discover more about bee behaviour without disrupting the nest. 

Dr Donkersley teamed up with Jenny Roberts, a lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Lancaster University, to develop the BeeBox with the support of Impact Acceleration Account funding from both the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).