Free bee SVG files

Stripes that stay in one piece

A bee is dark and yellow bands, and in a one-colour cut file bands that ran right across the body would fall apart into loose slices. Here each pale stripe is a window cut inside the abdomen with a rim of a little over 2 mm left round it, so the dark bands stay joined down both sides. Put yellow card or vinyl behind the windows and the bee has its colours from a single cut. The wings are drawn as outlines with a forked vein, which reads as a clear wing and lets the backing show through.

Each file is 100 mm on its longer side. The wing lines and legs of the honey bee from above are about 2 mm wide at that size, so cut it at 60 mm or more in vinyl and 80 mm or more in card. For small work such as jar labels and stickers, pick the bee silhouette, the simple bee or the cute bee, which have no fine lines.

Bees for honey jars, gardens and classrooms

For a honey jar lid, the bee on a honeycomb and the honey bee frame both fill a circle well: scale either one to the width of the lid. The bee with a looping trail comes as loose dashes, so apply it with transfer tape to keep the spacing. The bee with a heart trail is the same idea in one piece and is easier on fabric. Bumble bees are rounder and furrier than honey bees, and the two bumble bee files show that with a scalloped edge, which wants a sharp blade and a slow speed.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions