I’m thrilled to announce my new realistic bumblebee pattern, Tiny Bees!
Full of colour and slightly larger than life-sized, Tiny Bees are the perfect addition to any crocheted flower arrangement. With just a few rounds of crochet, a couple of colour changes, and simple no-sew wings, your little bee friend will come together in no time at all.
Inspiration
Since I started planting native flowers to attract pollinators to my garden, I’ve paid more attention to how many different types of bees I see. (Did you know there are over 400 species of bee in Ontario alone?!) My little bee friends and I happily coexist all summer – as I harvest my beans, they buzz around me and sip nectar from the bean flowers while they pollinate next week’s beans! I miss my little garden helpers in winter, so I thought I’d commemorate them with a realistic bee crochet pattern.
About the Design
Made in standard worsted weight yarn, Tiny Bees are a little larger than a real bee, but they’re the perfect size to accompany a vase of crocheted flowers, or add to a crocheted potted plant as an adorable embellishment!
Designing an amigurumi this small was quite a challenge – every stitch counts at this stage! I wanted this to be a very simple and unfussy design, but with enough detail to look like a real bee, not a cartoon.
It took a lot of tweaking to come up with a design that’s shaped like a bee while staying as small as possible, and combining PlanetJune simplicity with accurate bee markings. But I’m so happy with the result – a realistic no-fuss design in a tiny little body!
Meet the Bumblebees
I based my basic yellow-and-black bumblebee on the American Bumblebee (Bombus pensylvanicus) and the online version of this bee pattern is completely free for you to use, or you can say thanks with a donation.
As I like to reward people who support my work, the PDF version, available for a donation of any size, also includes two more bees with different markings!
L-R: yellow-and-black, spotted, white-tailed bees
- A spotted bee with the distinctive black spot on its back, like most of the common bumblebees and carpenter bees that visit my garden here in Canada. I based mine on the Common Eastern Bumblebee (Bombus impatiens).
- And a white-tailed bumblebee, as all the bumblebees I remember from my youth in the UK had a cute little white bum! I based mine on the White-Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) and Buff-Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris).
I hope that at least one of these bees will speak to you, but if you have a favourite bumblebee species, you can mix and match the markings in the pattern and change the colours to create your favourite bee.
If you’d like to make a closer-to-life-sized bee, just use finer yarn and a smaller hook – easy peasy! (See my Scaling Amigurumi article for the appropriate hook size to use with any size yarn.)
Make a Bee!
As always with my donationware patterns, the basic (yellow-and-black) bee pattern is free for you to use online, and you need only donate if you’d like to thank me for my work in creating it, or if you’d like the easy-to-print PDF version that also includes the two additional bee patterns.
Your support means the world to me – every dollar helps to support me so I can continue to create new designs.
Go to the free yellow-and-black Tiny Bees pattern >>
Or jump straight to donate:
Order the Tiny Bees pattern with all 3 bees >>
And why not grab one (or all!) of my crocheted flower patterns (pictured below) to accompany your bees?
PlanetJune flower crochet patterns >>
Not ready to make your bee yet? Add this pattern to your Ravelry queue:
I feel like Tiny Bees are the crocheted flower addition we never knew we needed! Don’t you agree?
I’m so pleased with how well these tiny cuties turned out, and how cheerful they look as they hover over their crocheted flowers. I hope they’ll brighten your day too!
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