DiY: Bee from a can
Isn't it lovely when the bees busily buzz through the garden from spring until early fall, buzzing from flower to flower to pollinate them? And, incidentally, they also produce delicious honey for us humans! But eventually, when it gets too cold (below ten degrees Celsius), the bees die, and their offspring wait in the hive until the next spring. Anyone who doesn't want to wait that long to spot the next bee now has the opportunity to easily make one.
This is what you need:
- Empty can
- A nail
- Yellow and black spray paint
- tape
- A PET bottle
- Wire (two pieces of approx. 20 cm each), alternatively: leather strap
- Four yellow buttons
- Two bottle caps
Tools required:
- hammer
- Scissors
- Hot glue gun
A quick tip: Right at the beginning, clean the can thoroughly. There should be no grease or dirt residue left. And of course, the tin also needs to dry thoroughly.
And this is how it works:
Step 1: It's going to be yellow and black: In the first step, you'll use a hammer and nail to make holes for the legs. To create a biologically accurate model, you'd obviously need three pairs of legs, but two look better. Next, you'll paint the entire can yellow. Once the paint is dry, use tape to cover the stripes that should remain yellow, and paint the spaces in between black. The thickness of the tape and the number of black stripes is entirely up to you.
Step 2: Add wings: Now, use scissors to cut the wings out of the PET bottles. Here, too, we're foregoing biological correctness and are simply attaching a pair of wings.
Step 3: Bee Legs : Use the wire or leather cord to make the legs. Push the two pieces of wire through the pair of holes and attach the buttons to the bottom end to represent the feet. Next, attach the wings with hot glue to the side of the can opposite the legs. 
A little tip: If you want to add antennae, take an additional piece of wire and glue it above the eyes. Bend both ends upward, but don't let them stick out too far.
Step 5: Attachment: If you want the busy bee to crawl, attach it to a stick and place it in one of your flowerbeds, for example. If you want it to fly, use the nail to poke a small hole in the center of the can and thread a string through it. Buzz, buzz, buzz! Little bees, buzz around!
Is DIY your world?
For you, old no longer means useless, broken no longer means unusable, and junk no longer means general waste? Great, then we've achieved our goal. In the future, you'll look at the world with different eyes and see potential where others see bulky waste.
You can find more ideas for great DIY projects in our book "Your Creative Garden." Thanks to step-by-step instructions and helpful pictures, many of our DIY ideas can be recreated with children. The internet also has a lot to offer. So if you want to get active, the following websites are a good place to start:
We hope, of course, that you stay true to the DIY theme and wish you lots of fun and success with your next construction projects!
