The beetle’s elytra have the characteristics of light weight and high energy absorption (EA). In this paper, based on the internal structure of beetle elytra, two bio-inspired honeycomb column thin-walled structures (BHTS) I and II were fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) technology in additive manufacturing (AM) in order to understand the possible influence of strain rate effect (SRE) on the BHTS under low speed uniaxial compression loading. The influence of three different SREs (0.001 s−1, 0.01 s−1 and 0.1 s−1) on the EA of BHTSs specimens during loading was discussed by means of out-of-plane uniaxial compression tests verified with numerical simulations. The experimental results show that SRE has a significant effect on the EA of BHTSs in low speed out-of-plane uniaxial compression tests: SRE can significantly increase the initial peak crushing force (PCF) and specific energy absorption (SEA) of all types of BHTS specimens. The average increase in PCF/SEA under SRE loading of 0.1 s−1 is 12.70%/9.79% and 17.63 %/11.60%, respectively, compared with 0.001 s−1 and 0.01 s−1. These research methods reduce the use of materials and improve the utilization rate of materials, which can provide important assistance for the design, manufacture and modeling of AM-based materials.