Bees – Honey-Makers, Pollinators, and . . . Artists?

8 January 2015

            Our honeybees already have a lot on their plate.  They make honey.  During pollination season, they’re trucked all over the place to pollinate cash crops.  With their sensitive sense of smell, they’re being used to diagnose diseases, sniff out contraband and even detect the smell of explosives. 

            You’d think they’d get a season off -- just to rest.  But, oh no!  Not content with overworking our bees in a dozen or more professions, honeybees are, now. being employed as creative artists.  I suppose, human artists are all out of ideas. What to do?  Why let’s make the bees do all the creative work and, then, (you can be sure), some “human being” will get the credit.   

            The latest example of the harnessing of our honeybees’ creative talent as well as the actual use of their creative product has already appeared in “commercial” art.   Dewar’s White Label Blended Scotch employed 80,000 honeybees to create a honeycomb sculpture of their new “Highlander Honey” and “Drinking Man” bottles. 

            The bees were basically locked in their studio with many, many flowers and only two places to make hives: two plastic shells.  The plastic shells were enlarged duplicates of the shape of the “Highlander Honey” and “Drinking Man” bottles.  The bees were then forced . . .  to create. 

            Working tirelessly, the bees produced beeswax, the insect’s chief building material and, also, propolis, the bee version of concrete.  Collaborating to develop their overall concept, the bees continued to build an absolutely unique pattern of honeycombs and brood combs to express the colony’s collective vision and worldview.

            The final result?

            This museum-quality art also, advertises Dewar’s products.  “Highlander Honey,” is a whiskey with added honey.  This quite popular combination is a recent development in whiskey blends.  So, Dewar’s release of a honey-flavored whiskey isn’t unusual in the worldwide industry. 

            But a flavored whiskey from Scotland is more than remarkable.  “Highlander Honey” was released under the watchful, if not suspicious, eye of the Scotch Whiskey Association.  Note that “whiskey’ doesn’t appear in the name of the product, "Highlander Honey."

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            Then, there's Dewar’s “Drinking Man.”  "Drinking Man" is both a Dewar's product and an ad campaign to bring their whiskeys to a wider range of customers.  In both cases, the creative work of our buzzing commercial artists and “ad women” of the insect world may supercharge Dewar’s advertising campaigns. 

            But do you hear anything about the bees who, not only developed the concept and design of each project but, then, did all the work to produce the sculptures themselves?

            No.

            What did the people do?   Well, all I see in the pictures are people watching while 80,000 honeybees work their yellow stripes off doing everything.  Of course, in the weeks to come you'll surely hear that the human artists provided the over-sized bottles.

            Yeah, sure.  Let’s run through this. 

            The bottle and shape already existed.  So, the shape of the “Highlander Honey” and “Drinking Man” bottle had already been “created.” 

            But the human artists enlarged it?  No, they scanned it and used a 3-D-printer to generate the over-sized bottle/plastic shell. 

            But the human artists put a honeycomb pattern in the bottle to give the bees a starting point?  No, they cut and pasted a honeycomb pattern inside the virtual bottle before they printed it.

            Then, after "all that work," cutting and pasting stuff that already existed, they printed a 3-D bottle.  Finally, they watched the bees design and build . . . everything.  

            But you know the drill.  In the coming months, we'll hear that the bees had nothing to do with it.  The humans did all the “creative” work.  That “story” might have worked if the picture below hadn't been leaked to the press!

No Bees 'Round Here?

            (Actually, the photo above wasn’t exactly leaked.  It was part of the photo package Dewar’s released with the story showing how the sculpture was made.)

            Anyway, I don’t see the name of a single bee, queen or worker, anywhere in any story about this project.  So, I’ll ask.  How many of these bees, queens or workers, had an agent to negotiate for them?  How many bees had lawyers to negotiate to protect their creative product?  I bet every single bee went unrepresented!.  All the human beings involved in this project should be ashamed of themselves.

            But let’s not forget the beekeeper.  If he or she was involved in this shameful tale, it will only be poetic justice when these keepers find that their bees are beginning to get “artsy.”  You know what I mean.  If you keep renting your bees out to do creative work in the arts, your bees will begin . . . . to change. 

            Suddenly, you’ll notice a queen bee wearing a beret.  Soon, the bees will stop buzzing about flowers, nectar and honey.  Instead, they’ll only buzz about their concepts, collective vision and, if they are German bees, their Weltanschauung (or world view). 

            Then, the bees will begin to argue with each other buzzing about the tension between their individual and collective "artistic vision."  The queen will want to be called the hive “master.”  The worker bees will want to be called “artisan” bees, instead of “worker bees.” 

            Soon fights will break out within the hives over creative differences.  Colonies will split, not over natural population issues, but simply over an inability to work creatively together.  Small colonies of bohemian bees will cluster together, in spite of their differences, in certain areas of the bee-yard.

            Finally, beekeepers will get the message and stick to renting bees out for pollination and stop trying to capitalize on their bees' creative talents by renting bees out for creative art projects.      

            Still, we have to add yet another career to the growing list of career opportunities open to our honeybees: creative artist.

Mark Grossmann of Hazelwood, Missouri & Belleville, Illinois

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