Bees, bees, bees........

I have been interested in bees for quite a few years.  I love honey and honeycombs and when I was living in Somerset, I used to buy my honey from a local beekeeper... that was until a few years ago when the supply of local honey dried up.   Varroa mite, colony collapse disorder - it was all starting to look grim for the future of the bees.
The culture and history of bees is fascinating.  Beekeeping goes back to prehistoric times, the first organised beekeeping was in ancient Egypt.  Below is a representation of a Mayan honeybee from 1800 years ago.

(Image: Collins Beekeepers Bible)
In mythology, the bee was considered sacred and was thought to act as a bridge between the  natural world and the underworld.  Bees were identified with Demeter, the  Greek goddess of earth and crops.  Over the years, the queen and the hive have been used as analogies for political and economic models of society.

So, in my retirement, I am going to keep bees, and what better time to build a beehive than in my woodwork project at eca. I bought a beehive flatpack, a WBC hive (named after William Broughton Carr, 1890).  It is made from red cedar wood and smells gorgeous.  In fact this whole project has been about smells, the honey, the hive, the honeycomb and the beeswax.  Here it is made up before I started making it into an artwork.

For my installation, I used only two lifts and put the beehive on legs to raise it up off the ground.  I  made a beeswax 'nest structure' for the underneath and showed it in a dark room with only a small lamp in the beehive.  This produced and interesting grid pattern on the  wall as well as highlighting the structure.  I dripped honey and honeycomb down the beeswax onto the floor and onto the inside of the lifts so that when you looked through the little hole in the roof, you could see it dripping down. The smell in the room was the first experience people got when visiting my beehive!  My tutor said it was 'a sensorial feast'.

I furthered the project for my end of year show by buying some red cedar batons to make new legs and by making a different shape 'nest' underneath. This is my final piece. Its called Melissae which is Greek for honey bees.