Yesterday I thrifted two wooden boxes with problems. The smaller one is a red oak box that someone made. It was nice umtil someone spray painted it gold and mangled a hinge and made the top not fit well.
The bigger one is a wooden wine bottle box from Nickel & Nickel. It had some ill-fitting issues as well.
Both were cheap and both were destined to become leafcutter bee boxes (and mason bees but really geared towards leafcutters).
Below shows the transformation. Top and bottom removed from the small oak box. Wood was trimmed to secure as the back of the box and the remaining panel made one of the wood plates with bee galleries (tunnels). The back was glued and screwed to the frame.
The Nickel & Nickel wine box top was about an inch or so in depth. Losing that would have left me 3" depth for the bee gallery plates. Since I wanted 4" (which is optimum for leafcutters), I carefully dismantled the top into the frame and cover. The thinner top cover of the wine box was used for partitions for some of the bee gallery plates. The frame of the top was glued and screwed to the actiual box frame giving it the optimum depth I was after.
I also thrifted a wonky doll chair in order to use the wood for bee gallery plates. This was mainly for the Nickel & Nickel wine box as I had scrap enough for the small one. It is a longer box so that and a couple of pieces of scrap provided enough for the plates.
Always looking for interesting plants for pollinators and food! Bonus points for highly, and pleasantly scented plants.
"Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit." [“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”] -- Marcus Tullius Cicero in Ad Familiares IX, 4, to Varro. 46 BCE
