MAKING A $3 BEE WATERER

After seeing a picture floating around social media of a bee waterer, I knew I had to make one of my own. What’s a bee waterer, you ask? Well, basically, it’s a shallow dish of water that allows for bees and other pollinators to drink and stay hydrated. But, you also need to be sure that they can’t drown, so the easy solution we followed was to use marbles for them to rest on while they drink!

I set out searching for clear marbles on Amazon, but my fiancé brilliantly suggested the dollar store and he was right — I was able to get a pan and two bags of marbles for, well, obviously $3. I could have gotten away with one bag of marbles I think, but since I had bought two I used them both and filled the dish a bit higher.

Here’s all that I used for this project (plus water, obviously):

Then I washed everything — not sure I really needed to, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I was careful with the marbles though as I didn’t want them down my garbage disposal. A strainer worked pretty well in the end.

Next I poured the marbles into the pan (which was just a simple metal pie pan) and brought it outside. Then I filled it — not too much as the whole point is for water to be up to the marbles, but not over them as to cause potential for drowning.

And voila! A bee waterer. At least that’s what it’s meant for. It’s going to be interesting to watch over the next few weeks who (if anyone) actually uses it. I’m hoping that by putting it on the table our nighttime visitors (like raccoons) will leave it alone. (They have a dog water bowl on the deck which they use all the time, along with the birds and squirrels during the day.) So, we’ll keep an eye out and try to snap some pictures for updates if anyone likes this new waterer!