Honey Bee Anatomy, Identifying a Subspecies

An up-close look at the anatomy of a honey bee. These are the five body parts needed to perform morphometric analysis testing. For this test (USDA-ID), I am trying to identify honey bee colonies to the subspecies level (race) to determine whether the bees are of European or African descent (also known as Africanized bees). The images were created using a microscope and focus-stacking software, where multiple images at varying depths of field are stitched together to achieve the highest clarity.

Honey bee forewing, wing venation patterns

Honey bee hindwing

Hamuli on hindwing

The Hamuli are hooks that connect the forewing and the hindwing.

Honey bee leg, femur and tibia

Honey bee leg- basitarsus

The basitartus is located on the hind leg. When honey bees are out foraging for pollen, they use their legs to collect and store the pollen. The pollen is collected on the scopa or hairs of the basitarsus.

Honey bee sternite from abdomen, cleaned and stained

This is the 3rd visible sternite taken from the honey bee abdomen, which is the lower portion of the bee's body. As honey bees produce wax, it is excreted onto these small plates on the sternite called wax mirrors.

Honey bee excreting wax

Illustration Credit: My Bee Book, Cotton's Treatise on the Bee, by William Charles Cotton, M.A., 1842

Here you can see the thin wax scales being excreted from the abdomen of the bee.

Illustration, honeycomb

Illustration Credit: My Bee Book, Cotton's Treatise on the Bee, by William Charles Cotton, M.A., 1842

Illustration Credit: The Hive and the Honey Bee, Honey Bees of the World, by A. Dietz, Ph.D

p. 38 Fig. 6, Shows geographic distribution of different honey bee sub-species or races.

African Honey Bee Populations in Florida, Scientific Poster

A Closer Look

Queen Bee, macro-photography

(2014) Macro-photoraphy, used auto-montage system

Florida Museum of Arthropods, Gainesville, FL

Getting a good photograph of a queen bee was a unique challenge. I had to wash and blow dry her hair. The photograph was created using an auto-montage system, using several images stitched together for optimal clarity. The photograph was published in an educational honeybee book in France.

Honeybee wing venations and worker bee

(2013) macro-photoraphy

The photograph of the honeybee worker wing was taken while performing USDA-ID, an extensive morphometric analysis test used to determine the origin of a bee colony and to see whether the colony is of European decent or has become Africanized. The image of the worker honey bee was taken using the auto-montage system at the University.

Varroa destructor, mite

(2009) macro-photograhy- auto-montage system

University of Florida, Department of Entomology

This is an image of the Varroa destructor, one of the greatest pests to the honey bee. The mite arrived in North America in 1987 from Asia.

Honeybee worker wing

(2014)

Projected image of worker honeybee wing from prepared microscope slide. I photographed this wing upon noticing an anomaly in the one of the vein intersections. This slide could not be used in the morphometric test I was running, since it was missing one of the vital 12 vein intersections.

Honeybee worker wing

(2014)

This wing also had an anomaly in one of the 12 vein intersections I use in the morphometric test USDA-ID.

Honeybee sternite

(2014)

Projected image from microscope slide I prepared for a USDA-ID test. I dissected the honeybee, removing the 3rd visible sternite from the abdomen where the wax is excreted. The sternite was then cleaned and stained and set into resin on the slide.

Observation Station: Attempts at Navigation

A temporary, mobile exhibition & informative, relational art piece installed at the Samuel P. Harn Museum, (coincidently next to the Natural History Museum). This temporary station occupied two locations in the museum. Museum visitors could see actual observation bee hives on front lawn of museum, and also visit a Pollinator Reading Station in the museum’s Bishop Study Center.

Photographed by: James Nguyen

Installation view, Observation Station: attempts at navigation

Samuel P. Harn Museum (2010)

Detail of bees, Observation Station (2010)

Detail, boy watching bees, Observation Station (2010)

Installation view, Observation Station

Harn Museum, Gainesville, FL (2010)

Detail of bees, Observation Station

Installation view, Observation Station

Wood, laser-cut paper, wax, 2010 (each sculpture: 56” x 48” x 14”)

The top frame displays shapes used in lab experiments to test honey bee pattern recognition. Certain shapes were used to help prevent bees from drifting between hives.

Observation Station, Detail of frames

Wood, laser-cut paper, wax, (each sculpture: 56” x 48” x 14”), 2010

The hive has frames made of paper with laser-cut symbols. As light shines through the frames, this strange cartography becomes discernible through a semi-transparent layer of wax.

Since Colony Collapse Disorder mainly affects honey bees’ spatial memory and navigation abilities, the Observation Stations functioned as a control towers. The symbols and maps were strategically placed on the frames with the purpose of assisting the bees with navigating in and out of the hive and to deter drifting between hives.

Detail frame, Diagram of human and honey bee vision

One of the frames from a hive, made of paper with laser-cut symbols. This frame compares the vision of honey bees and humans.

Observation Station, Detail of frame, Waggle Dance Map

Wood, laser-cut paper, wax, 2010

This frame contains a diagram of the honey bee waggle dance, a dance used to communicate to the other bees the location of a nectar source in relation to the sun.

Installation view, Observation Station & Video projections

Harn Museum (2010)

Installation view, Observation Station

Harn Museum (2010)

Installation view, Video projection

Harn Museum (2010)

One of the videos, In and Out of the Hive, which was projected onto the side of the museum, shows a continuous stream of traffic pouring from the narrow entrance of a hive. The projected image of the hive merges with the architecture of the museum. Its content acquires a metaphorical dimension: as bees go into the hive, so do people enter the museum. The metaphor invests the museum with the attributes of the hive.

Pollinator Reading Station, Bishop Study Center, Harn Museum (2010)

Reading Station, Bishop Study Center, Harn Museum (2010)

Pollinator Reading Station, detail installation

Bishop Study Center, Harn Museum (2010)

Installation detail, Pollinator Reading Station,

Bishop Study Center, Harn Museum (2010)

Pollinator Station, detail of Apitherapy Backpack

Pollinator Reading Station, detail of Apitherapy Backpack

The Architecture of the Hive

The hexagon in my work refers to the geometrical figure as an overall sign of perfect order and the most efficient building block for architecture and design.

Honeycomb Stack

Wood, acrylic, 36"x36"x10", 2012

Honey bees collect pollen, which varies in color depending on the floral source. The pollen is stored within the hexagonal prisms, along the fringes of the honeycomb.

Honeycomb Table

Wood, plexi-glass, 16"x40"x16", 2013

Observation Bee Hive and Honeycomb Bench

Mixed media- wood, glass, honeycomb panels, plexi-glass 80"x48"x60", 2012-2013

Hexagonal Cell, golden honeycomb, model

Wood, laser-cut honeycomb pattern in wood, plexi-glass

6.25” x 7.25” x 6.0“, 2013

Hexagonal Cell and Honeycomb

Wood-teak, laser-cut wood

6.0” x 4.0” x 3.5”, 2013

Hexagonal Cells, 3 stacked

wood, 14.0" x 5.25" x 7.25"

Trihedral rhombic dodecahedron- 1 side view

Digital image- 1 side view of wooden sculpture

When honey bees construct honeycomb, this is the shape that forms the base of the hexagonal cells.

Swarm Phone

Mixed media- wood, telephone, wax, plexiglass

13.5"x 15"x 3.5", 2010

A collaboration with my honey bees. The bees attached honeycomb onto a telephone placed inside the hive. Late in the summer, a part of the colony swarmed.

Swarm Phone speaks metaphorically about the necessity of improving communication between humans and bees. The insertion of the telephone into the hive was an interference in the bees' world, but it also served as a symbolic act expressing the desire to find common terms of communication. The handset featured a contact microphone that relayed the sounds from inside the hive. The bees could not translate the meaning of the handset, and we could not translate what the bees were saying. When we come close to listen to the bees, will we be able to understand what they are saying?

Swarm Phone

Mixed media- wood, telephone, wax, plexi-glass

13.5"x 15"x 3.5", 2012

With a choice between several objects to build upon, the bees preferred the shape of the phone.

Swarm Phone, detail

Mixed media- wood, telephone, wax, plexi-glass,

13.5"x 15"x 3.5" (2010- bees) 2012

Detail, Swarm Phone

Mixed media- wood, telephone, wax, plexi-glass,

13.5"x 15"x 3.5", (2010- bees) 2012

The bees chose to design an entrance or passageway near the curvature of the phone's earpiece. The bees could then walk directly through the honeycomb to access both sides of the comb

A Family Legacy in Communications

My great-grandfather Charles and my great-grandmother “Boo” Beulah started one of the first telephone companies in Texas. She became one of the first telephone operators to work at the switchboard. He worked with the company for 61 years. I remember her crying in amazement the first time she witnessed a live call with video, where you could see the caller on the other end of the line.

I dedicate the artwork Swarmphone to my great-grandparents. The legacy they built inspires me. The company continues to provide employment to so many people in the community and everyone is considered to be one large, extended family.

Here you can see my great-grandmother operating the switchboard at the telephone company in 1949.

Interview with a Bee

What if colony collapse disorder were predicated on the inability of bees to remember how to return to the hive? If we were able to speak to bees concerning this problem, how would we go about communicating? In a humorous approach, this video stages an interview with a bee.

The video Interview with a Bee is a collage of black and white macro-images of honey bees cut out into bee puppets. I interview the bee with a microphone while wearing a beekeeper’s veil. Phone operators plug the lines into the honeycomb as if it were a switchboard, while other bees pick up the signals from a pirate radio station from within the hive.

Although this video discloses the absurdity of attempting to communicate with bees on this level, it also points to the limitations of our own sensory apparatus to accomplish this task. Even if we cannot fully understand their language, we need to expand our outreach into their world and learn how to better communicate for our mutual benefit.

The video was recorded through a miniature bee spy camera.

Interview with a Bee, video clip

Interview with a Bee, video still (2009)

Still from video, Interview with a Bee (2009)

Interview with a Bee, video still (2009)

Honey

Honey photographed through the microscope.

Honey, microscopy (2011)

Honey

Microscopic images (2011)

Beehive Backpack

A Meditation on the Migration of Honey Bees

Mixed media: reclaimed wood, cotton, wax (2009)

The Beehive Backpack is dedicated to Francois Huber (1750-1831), a Swiss naturalist and a blind beekeeper who greatly contributed to the advancements of modern beekeeping. The backpack design is based on Huber’s Leaf or Book Hive, which had partitions that opened like a book, allowing the honey bee colony to be fully observed and inspected without disturbing the bees.

Beehive Backpack, created to be worn as an interactive art piece, speaks about migration, geography, and community. Just as bees migrate for pollination, I traveled with the backpack and documented myself walking through various landscapes, some of those being, gardens in Florida, art fairs in New Orleans, and a small coastal town in Mexico. Wearing the beehive on my back raised a lot of questions, which allowed me to explain to people the challenges bees are facing and simple actions people could take to improve the health of the bees. The locals also shared their own stories on bees and beekeeping.

The backpack was inspired upon learning of migratory beekeeping, where hives are rented out to farmers and transported to various locations to pollinate crops. American agriculture depends upon this type of migratory pollination. Ancient Egyptians also practiced migratory beekeeping by sending hives down the Nile on boats. North America has a history of migratory beekeeping where the bees were transported on barges, trains, horse-drawn carts and later on automobiles.

The migration of bees reminds me of my own experiences with traveling and being in constant motion. I find the satisfaction in the simplicity of carrying only the essentials on my back. I like the idea of being a part of a collective, of being connected through relationships to form a single unit that moves and works together. Perhaps this interest addresses a desire towards utopia and the struggle in the realization of our own limitations.

The hive presents the model of a society working in complete order and unity. Traveling to diverse locations in search for endangered hives while wearing the Beehive Backpack was an attempt to gain a deeper understanding into the complex world of bees and the relationship we have with the hive.

Map with GPS coordinates, Places travelled wearing Beehive Backpack

This is a map showing GPS coordinates where I travelled by foot and by plane wearing the Beehive Backpack, while talking to people about bees.

Beehive Backpack, Community Gardens, Gainesville, FL

Beehive Backpack, a meditation on the migration of bees, Poster

Francois Huber's Leaf or Book Hive Design

Francois Huber (1750), a Swiss naturalist and a blind beekeeper, greatly contributed to the advancement of modern beekeeping. One such creation was his Leaf or Book Hive design. The hive, whose 12 partitions, opened like a book, allowed the honey bee colony to be fully observed and inspected.

Apitherapy: Prescriptions & Instructions

Apitherapy: Prescriptions & Instructions from the Hive (2009) was a set of prescriptions that I personally wrote. The prescriptions were stored in an Apitherapy Backpack, which was a wooden, mobile backpack carrying products from the hive, such as royal jelly, honey, and pollen. The bottom drawer of the backpack resembled the interior of a beehive box. The prescriptions and instructions were filed into miniature frames as in a filing cabinet.

Pollen collected by honeybees

My bees carrying pollen into hive, 2010

Wildflower Seed Packet

Packets of wildflower seeds were passed out to the public, encouraging them to plant their own wildflower gardens to provide forage for bees.

Prescription: How to insert a package of honey bees into a new hive

Prescription: How to insert a package of bees into new hive continued

Prescription: How to avoid being stung by a bee (2009)

Prescription: Bee Pollen (2009)

Prescription: Honey for treating anxiety (2009)

Prescription: Honey for treating constipation (2009)

Prescription: Honey for losing weight (2009)

Prescription: Treating a wound with honey, while in wilderness

Prescription: Plant Beet Seeds (2009)

Prescription: Plant okra seeds (2009)

Communicating with the Hive

Installation View, Communicating with the Hive

The large, projected video shows a honey bee performing the waggle dance over the surface of the honeycomb. Several bees closely monitor the choreography of the dance. Bees use the symbolic dance language as one way to communicate the location of a food source in relation to the sun.

The video Inside the Hive is projected upon wooden beehive sculptures with tiny screen windows. In the tiny screens on the side of the hive, a separate video plays showing a performance where I am attempting to communicate with the honey bees through a choreographed dance.

Communicating with the Hive, Installation view

Installation- mixed media: video projection, wood, video monitors

Communicating with the Hive, video still

Still shot from video playing on a tiny screen on side of hive.

Here I am performing a choreographed dance in front of a hive in a field by the Dadant & Sons Bee Supply store in High Springs, FL. I am attempting to communicate with the bees through their symbolic dance language.

The performance was made into a video which I played back on a tiny screen inside the hive. In doing so, I transformed myself to the scale of a bee and the bees were enlarged to the size of humans.

Communicating with the Hive, installation view

Communicating with the Hive, video excerpt

Inside the Hive, video clip

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

While wandering through the countryside on a trip to Granada, Spain, I came across an apiary with rows of stacked, abandoned hives. This was the first time I photographed beehives. I was left questioning what had happened to the bees.

Apiary, Granada, Spain (2009)

Living with Bees

My beekeeping friend received a call from a homeowner in Gainesville, FL, who thought he had bees living in the exterior wall of his grandmother's house. Instead of killing the bees, he called a beekeeper to remove the colony. This was my first experience with bee removal. The process took over 10 hrs. We had to locate the nest, collect the queen, remove the honeycomb, fit the comb into frames, wait for the bees to follow the queen and finally relocate the hives.

Wall of Bees

Bee Call

After hearing bees in the wall, this guy decided to call a beekeeper for help. We were glad he wanted the bees to be relocated.

Searching for hive

We arrived on the scene and started searching for the location of the beehive. We could hear the hum of the bees behind an exterior wall of the house. A few bees were entering and exiting through a small hole in the wall. Translucent, cool puffs of smoke arose from the lit smoker and lingered around the sculptures in the small garden.

We set up a ladder with a hive box directly under the nest.

We cut into the wall and now I'm getting ready to lift the board covering the bees.

As we remove the exterior wall, the hive is completely visible.

Freshly built honeycomb and a lot of bees!

First piece of honeycomb removed from hive.

If you look on the upper left side of the honeycomb, you can see drone brood, which is where the male bee larvae are located.

With one part of the honeycomb removed, now we start removing the rest of the hive, while looking for the queen.

Look at the visual differences between the older honeycomb on the left and the fresh honeycomb on the right.

After removing the honeycomb from the nest, we then start fitting the comb into removable frames to be put into a hive body.

The bees had built honeycomb onto the exterior wall that we removed. If you look in the upper right corner, you can see more drone brood (male baby bees). Also, scan the honeycomb and look for larger cells, facing a different direction than the rest of the cells. In a hive, these cells would normally be vertical and open towards the bottom. These large cells, which resemble peanuts, are called queen cells.

The bees are gathering around a post. The queen is probably beneath the protective layer of the bees.

We continue to collect bees for hours, while transferring them into makeshift hives.

Since this was such a huge hive, we have to fit them into many boxes. Preparing to relocate the bees, I am taping up the full hives.

With whatever materials available, we prepare the beehive boxes for travel.

Bee-crumbs

This video was created as a memento mori for the bees that became disoriented and could not find their way back home. Honey bees' spatial memory and navigation abilities are affected by pesticides and other illnesses.

Entire honey bee colonies have become displaced, unable to make sense of their surroundings, and unable to decipher where they belong. As exiles, the bees wander through nature and then vanish without a trace. The possibility of a world with diminishing populations of honey bees and other pollinators is a harsh reality humans might have to face in the near future. The consequences to our environment and to agricultural production could be devastating.

Walking around the yard with one eye shut, one eye opens to a kaleidoscopic vision of dead bees tumbling around a glass jar. Sunlight filters through the glass and flickers onto the bodies of the bees as they collapse and tumble over one another.

Bee-crumbs, video excerpt, 2008