Review: LEGO 42669 Beekeepers’ House and Flower Garden
5
LEGO Friends is starting 2025 strongly with an excellent wave of new sets that expands the world of Heartlake City. We’re now entering the 3rd year of the rebooted LEGO Friends theme, and one of the new features of the theme are more advanced sets like 41757 Botanical Garden and 42639 Andrea’s Modern Mansion with 12+ and 14+ age recommendations respectively, providing younger fans with more challenging builds.
These more advanced sets are also a useful label for adult LEGO fans who enjoy the Friends theme. Lucky us! One of the new 12+ sets in the 2025 LEGO Friends range is 42669 Beekeepers’ House and Flower Garden, a fun new build that champions beekeeping and the importance of honeybees to our ecosystem, that’s a delightful companion to 41757 Botanical Garden!
This was one of the first few LEGO Friends sets that my daughter (our resident CFO – Chief Friends Officer) built and I was absolutely buzzing to review it!
Special thanks to LEGO for sending this set over for review.
42669 Beekeepers’ House and Flower Garden Set Details
42669 Beekeepers’ House and Flower Garden
42669
Beekeepers’ House and Flower Garden
4 (Paisley, Aliya, Terence and Orla)
1,161
US$89.99 / AU$149.99 / £89.99 / €99.99
1 January 2025
Wes Talbott (@wes_talbott), Agnieszka Ulatowska (Graphics), Felipe Telles (element design)
There are 8 numbered bags included in the box, and these 2 sticker sheets. The smaller sticker sheet utilises clear stickers, that go on transparent tiles, and window panes, whereas the larger ones are printed on opaque white paper.
While this is a 12+ set, I didn’t feel like there was anything especially complex with the build, as my 8-year old daughter didn’t have a hard time with the set at all, but there was a very nice mix of building experiences, from the main structure, to trees and the flowers and plants, creating a very pleasant flow that’s reminiscent of 41757 Botanical Garden.
42669 Beekeepers’ House and Flower Garden Minidolls
There are only 4 minidolls included in the set, which feels like a low number for a 1,161-piece set, but we get 2 new characters, Terence and Orla, Paisley’s grandparents, who run the Beekeeping sanctuary that Aliya and Paisley are visiting.
Elderly minidolls are somewhat of a rarity, although LEGO are trying their best to include more age-diverse minifigures in sets, so it’s great to get Terence and Orla, who are both beekeepers! Orla is even wearing a full Bee Suit, complete with the excellent Hat and Veil combo that first made its appearance with LEGO Minifigures Series 21’s Beekeeper.
This dual-moulded veil is really quite cool, and I’m guessing was in danger of being retired before LEGO Friends rescued it by using it as the hero minidoll element in this set. I especially like the translucent effect of the matte trans-black glass, which mimics the mesh that’s used by real-life beekeepers.
Here’s Orla without her beekeeper veil. She has a lovely and kind face, especially with her large almond eyes.
And for the main Friends characters, we have Paisley and Aliya. Aliya loves learning and is especially passionate about her studies, so it makes a lot of sense for Paisley to invite her to her grandparent’s Bee Farm to learn about how honey is made.
Here’s a look at their back prints.
Two pets are included in the set, a grumpy-looking cat Peri, and a Amos, a bunny with heterochromia, a genetic condition where both eyes have different colours. This is apparently quite common in rabbits! He also has a neat little moustache and grey eyebrows on his face, which looks very much like Terence!
The Completed Build
And here’s the completed build which is quite a large and satisfying build. The first thing that immediately grabs you is the composition of the model, with the lovely beekeper’s cottage being the central structure point, flanked by greenery on both sides.
The composition is actually quite interesting – while the Beekeepers’ House is the only building, your eyes are also drawn to the Flower Garden to the right as the asymmetrical shape of the trees, and vibrant colours naturally draw your eyes in, which is quite clever.
Unlike most Friends buildings which usually are vibrant and colourful, the dark blue and lavender colour scheme is much more muted here which I quite like. That said, there are some really neat building techniques utilising shapes for the exterior facade details that builders will enjoy.
Here’s a look at the front of the house. The window sills are another subtle but very cool technique and I love that there’s a spot for Peri to stand and keep a lookout, as well as the Honeybee stained glass window in the door.
Here’s a look at the back of the model.
There’s a simple bedroom on the upper level of the home. I really like the use of different shades of yellow and orange tiles to create a checkered quilt design which works dramatically well here! I also really love the graphic design on the rugs that flank the bed, as well as the drawer handles on the bedside table!
The real highlight of the structure is the ground floor, which is a little shop selling a wide variety of honey and beekeeping products! There’s a large display stand with honey, although its a shame that these are stickers! The cubes of honey in the cloche look very attractive as well, and I also like that there are beeswax candles as well!
There are also these new printed Flower Seed tiles on sale. These are also very realistic as beekeepers often encourage gardeners to plant and grow flowers that attract local pollinators. There’s also a cool stickered chart above with a hexagon beehive design – maybe some sort of calendar?
On the other wall we also have this cool chart which explains the different types of honeybees and which flowers they’re attracted to! The flowers match the ones on the seed packets which is also a very nice touch.
There’s also this lovely portrait of Terence, Orla, and Paisley which is the biggest indication that they’re Paisley’s grandparents in the set.
If you didn’t know Paisley’s mother Rose passed away when she was little, so I’m sure her grandparents played a huge part in raising her as a child, so this entire set and the introduction of her extended family provides some really nice Heartlake City worldbuilding.
The real highlight of the set is the outdoors section, and on the left side of the house, we have a neat little vegetable garden. The planer boxes are quite neat, and I especially like how the carrots look growing in the ground, with some freshly harvested ones being stored in a box, that Amos the bunny is hungrily eyeing.
Apart from flowers, bees are also crucial to pollinate vegetables such as these cabbages! The more realistic bee is a brand new printed tile and it’s great to get a non-cartoony Bee!
These were the cartoony bee tiles that were available previously.
Out the front, there’s a table and benches for Aliya and Paisley to enjoy some tea with honey!
On the other side of the building, you walk down a tan pathway to get to the brilliant flower garden, which is where the beehives are kept! Orla is in her beesuit here and she also comes with a bee smoker, which is used to calm and pacify honey bees so that beekeepers can tend to the hives.
The same flowers that feature in the seed packets also show up in the flower garden, which is a great bit of continuity. Botanicals fans will enjoy these new LEGO Sunflowers that are brand new elements debuting in 2025 sets.
But the real highlight of this section are these LEGO beehives! These colourful boxes accurately mimic modern beehives that beekeepers setup as homes for the bees, and there are also plenty of these new bee tiles all over the hives.
Opening up the roof of the beehives reveal another brilliant surprise in the set – actual bee hive frames! You get eight bee hive frames in total, which all slot in nicely into each beehive.
Here’s a look at these new LEGO beehive frames, which feature honeycombs filled with freshly made honey, and also 2 bees tending to the cells! This is a really elegant and practical way to teach younger kids about honeybees, and pollination and how honey is made, all integrated very nicely into the set.
The bees are much more realistic and detailed than the honeycomb tile from Series 21’s Beekeeper.
Apart from the modern beehives, there is also a hanging beehive in one of the trees as well, demonstrating the different variety of beehives, as well as habitats that bees prefer to make their homes in!
What I liked:
- Fun set that blends great Friends architecture and an ecological message
- More elderly Friends minidolls who also happen to be Paisley’s grandparents
- Model is brilliantly composed with gorgeous colours
What I didn’t like:
- More information on honeybees could’ve been included in the manual
- Could use another minidoll
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed how complete of a set 42669 Beekeepers’ House and Flower Garden is. It’s definitely designed for a more mature audience, but in spite of the 12+ age rating, I think it’s perfectly adequate for younger Friends fans, especially as it’s such a fantastic vehicle to learn about how important honeybees and pollination are to humans and the natural world!
All the hallmarks of a great Friends set are present. Diverse minidolls with Paisley, and Aliya joined by Terence and Orla, two older minidolls. We also get 2 new animals with unique features/expressions, and the build is a varied blend of structure, interiors, as well as plenty of flowers, plants and trees.
There really isn’t a weak spot in the set – even the price is fairly competitive for a 1000+ piece set, especially knowing that LEGO Friends sets often get discounted, potentially making this an even better purchase when on sale.
The Beekeeper’s House is quite modest, but the veggie garden and flower garden surrounding it really add to its overall presence in a way that many standalone Friends buildings don’t, purely because the trees and flowers just create so much more breathing space.
If I really had to nitpick, it’s the lack of any actual information about honeybees in the manual. The back of the box has some imagery of real bees and beehives, but that’s it in terms of the conservation and ecological message. I do understand that it’s likely challenging to translate messages into multiple languages, but it really seems like a missed opportunity to not even have brief annotations in the instructions, like they do with LEGO Icons sets.
That said, 42669 Beekeepers’ House and Flower Garden is a fantastic start to LEGO Friends in 2025, and if you’re looking for a companion set to 41757 Botanical Garden, this is a fantastic entry in the advanced LEGO Friends set collection. Also, if you love bees, or are an amateur beekeeper yourself, I probably won’t need to convince you of the merits of such a bee-utiful set!
Final Score
Audience rating
Thanks for reading! 42669 Beekeepers’ House and Flower Garden is available from LEGO.com, Amazon or your local LEGO toy retailer.
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