Now you can invite gentle bees to the backyard, give them a home and watch them pupate from egg to larva to adult bee. This is a beautiful way to connect with nature, relax in the garden and help our precious bees.

There are 20,000 species of solitary native bee species in the world, most of these are gentle bees that live alone. Solitary bees are a keystone species and without them our landscape would be quite barren and animals, including us, would go hungry. In the past 50 years habitat loss and chemical use has wiped out much of the insect population, including the most important insect on earth, the solitary native bee. 

Our mission with this project is to inspire every nature lover to go outdoors and fall in love with solitary bees. A great way to start is to give the bees a home, learn about their fascinating life cycle and be part of our ecosystem's restoration.

In our work making shelters, we wanted to reuse material and reduce waste. We found various resources so that most of our products are made using reclaimed wood. Not only can you save the bees, but you can also save trees. Due to wood reuse, no two shelters are alike.  Each is a unique piece of art with distinctive wood grain and coloring, and each has a unique number stamped on the front.

What are Solitary Bees??

Solitary bees are found all over the world and pollinate most of our food and plants. The bees typically search for an abandoned beetle hole to make their nests, but since we clean up our yards it has become more difficult for them to find a nesting cavity. Our shelters mimic the tunnel the bees use in nature. Simply install the wood shelter in a sunny spot near flowers and then wait for a female solitary native bee to find the tunnel and lay her eggs. Helping the bees is good for them, but it is a great way to relax and get lost in nature.

Our shelter is one part of a habitat sanctuary where cavity-nesting bees can make a home. Other tips are to use organic gardening methods and to provide bees with nectar and pollen by growing flowers. 

We created the SeeBee Shelter with clear side panels to provide a nesting place for the bees and a fascinating and educational observation refuge to enjoy. You can check the nest daily and watch as the egg, larvae and pupa evolve into a bee. After one year the bees emerge from the nest to pollinate thousands of nearby flowers, fruit and trees during their eight-week lifespan. Unlike honey bees, solitary bees have no large hive to protect, so they are gentle and rarely sting, which makes them safe around children and pets. The European honey bees get all the press, but they are an invasive species and are displacing the super-pollinating native bees that we cannot live without.

FABRICATION

We construct our handmade shelters with salvaged and reclaimed wood collected from our neighbors.  We salvage the gorgeous mahogany wood from our friends at Taylor Guitars, which are cutoffs from manufacturing their legendary guitars. We reclaim the other varieties of wood used in structures from several other local sources, giving the wood a useful new life.

Made in San Diego, our See Bee Studio and SeeBee Shrine are new products available only on InDemand. We want to reach people who love new and unique products and want to make a difference to help the bees.

OUR HISTORY

With so little known about solitary native bees and their unusual nesting practices, we saw an opportunity to spread the word and offer a way to take action. In 2015, the company was founded with one product, and as of today we have made over 3,000 shelters. Our mission is to create a functional and beautiful shelter along with educational and decorative products to engage nature lovers. Our new design adds an educational component that otherwise was hidden. Educating children has always been one of our goals and this observation shelter will get them outdoors.

BEE LIFECYCLE

Solitary bees lay eggs in a tunnel nest, which is usually an abandoned beetle hole. But, with increasing human development and our well-manicured yards, these valuable bees can no longer find as many suitable places to nest.  The shelter provides a cavity nest where one female bee lays a series of eggs and then caps the door. One bee can fill up to three tunnels. While building the nest she is pollinating the garden and is in fact, 100x more effective at pollination than a honey bee.

Native bees also pollinate blueberries, tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant, which honey bees do not pollinate. Each bees has its role and adds to the biodiversity of the land. When the original bees are present in the environment, they are able to repair a fragmented ecosystem and bring the landscape back into balance.

JOIN THE BEE MAP

Each shelter is numbered: when you install your bee shelter, we will add you to the international bee map so everyone will know you are saving your local bees.

How does InDemand work? A InDemand offer runs for 60 days.  During that time you can pre-order products at a special price before they go on to retail. You will have access to the new item before it is released to the public.

REWARD - SeeBee Studio - Perfect for holiday gifts, schoolyards, cities, residential and commercial complexes. Make your community a native bee sanctuary.

The SeeBee Studio has two color options - reclaimed plain cedar or reclaimed white. We will ask for your wood and bee decoration once the campaign ends.

REWARD - SeeBee Shrine - Perfect for holiday gifts, schoolyards, cities, residential and commercial complexes. Make your community a native bee sanctuary.

SeeBee Shrine is made of reclaimed wood - Options are faded grey or plain cedar. Also, there are two options for bee decorations.

REWARD - SeeBee Studio Bundle - Shelter PLUS new exclusive items for bee enthusiasts.

REWARD - SeeBee Shrine Bundle - Shelter PLUS new exclusive items for bee enthusiasts.

ABOUT THE CREATOR

Hi, I am Candace Vanderhoff. I am a licensed architect and my clients are solitary native bees. As a lifelong environmentalist, I love nature, so to watch land degrade over the years has been heartbreaking. In 2015, I installed my first bee shelter and watched our local resin bees fill it with eggs. I wanted to get others involved, so made a bee house that people loved and SoloBee was born. Today we have a small workshop where we fabricate our shelters with salvaged wood. It is such an honor to be working to restore nature, giving back to the earth, thanking her for all she gives to us. I hope that you will join me in helping the solo bees. 

If you would like to help in another way, you can a big impact by sharing our project with your nature loving friends.  Indiegogo has easy share tools on our page, so please help us spread the word.  Together we can save the bees ~ Candace Vanderhoff