Bees Build Vase for Artist
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.19.07
Bees are so industrious when they are at the job. Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny introduces With a Little Help of the Bees in Milan. It is a vase built by bees. we quote Dezeen:
"Libertiny made a vase-shaped hive that the bees then colonised, building a hexagon comb around it. The wax sheets used to make the hive were embossed with a honeycomb pattern to help the bees on their way. Libertiny calls the process “slow prototyping” - it took 40,000 bees a week to make the vase. Since the bees get aggressive when they are interrupted, Libertiny had to guess when it was time to remove the vase."
The artist told Dezeen: “To give a form to this natural product it has occurred more than logical to choose a form of a vase as a cultural artifact. Beeswax comes from flowers and in the form of a vase ends up serving flowers on their last journey." More from Milan 2007 from ::Dezeen
Somehow I feel bad for the bees, must be the words of wisdom that my florist always tells me about the plight of worker bees.