This is why I decorate my beehives.

IMAGINE….

if you lived in a row of white houses that all looked identical, and the only real way you could tell it was YOUR home was the smell wafting from the front door – maybe it’s the lovely smell of freshly baked cookies, or garlic (for those making pasta sauce), or if someone was burning vanilla essence – I mean, you’d find your way approximately to the general area and hopefully that scent would guide you home – you might accidentally wander into someone else’s home and get chased away – but let’s face it, wouldn’t it be much more helpful if your home REALLY stood out from the rest?

From a honey bee’s perspective, imagine if you spent your entire life so far inside the hive doing all the “house bee” chores (nurse bee, janitor bee, etc.) each time getting “promoted” into a new position until one day, you’re told your next job will be as a forager bee – going OUTSIDE your hive to collect food for your family (the “food” really being ingredients – nectar and pollen that you will bring home for the food to be made). Imagine how you’d feel – knowing you’ll be flying about 3 miles from your home to get the ingredients AND then having to find your way back home. With a brain the size of a sesame seed, it must be a HUGE challenge indeed. It’s not like you have a GPS or a set of maps you can carry with you. No, all you have is your senses, your sight, smell and sense of direction. So what do you do?

How do you know what your home even looks like? How on earth will you find your way home again?

What you, as a tiny honey bee, have to do is an “orientation flight”. Along with hundreds and hundreds of your sister (the worker bees), who are also becoming foragers for the first time, you’ll have to leave the hive for the first time (other than previous cleansing flights or bathroom breaks) and figure out what your home looks like. You’ll crawl up the outside wall and launch backwards into the air, flying in small figure 8’s while you look at your hive and committing it to memory. These figure 8’s will get larger and larger, so you’re eventually flying higher and higher, all around your hive, noticing what your home looks like, what landmarks there are, anything that can guide you back home visually. Then you can fly up and away, having memorized what your home looks like.

If your home is just one white box among lots of other white boxes – it must be much more difficult to recognize where to go. THAT’S WHY I DECORATE MY HIVES! Even if it’s not a bee fact, I feel that having a unique, vibrant, BRIGHTLY COLORED hive will make it that much easier for those tiny bees to recognize their specific home and to find their way back.

I don’t think it really matters so much what is on the outside of the hive, as long as it is LIGHT COLORS, NON-TOXIC, and unique. Some of my hives have stenciled animals on them, or simple but unique designs – all to help the bees from that hive recognize it and find their way home. Once they get closer, yes, they will also recognize it by the Nasonov pheremone being fanned at the entrance by their sisters, but I truly believe the physical design and coloring plays a role in their long distance vision.

THIS IS NOT WRITTEN ANYWHERE IN ANY SCIENCE BOOK, IT’S NOT A PROVEN THEORY, IT’S PURELY MY OWN OPINION, ME TRYING TO THINK LIKE A BEE – SO IT’S NOT BASED ON FACT AT ALL – Just one beekeeper’s opinion!

Unfortunately, creating a mishmash of designs and patterns for my own apiary has resulted in a jumble of hives and a very disorganized appearance, as you can see from the photos, so as an art lover, I decided to create BEE ART – bright, colorful artwork that doesn’t go INSIDE your home, but outside, in your apiary! Your beehives become your art! Art for your bees, and art for your garden.