My history and interest in bees starts in Vojvodina with a great-great-grandmother whose marriage dowry was a queen bee. My grandfather carried on the family tradition, nurturing the decedents of that queen bee until his death. He often spoke about the environmental changes he was noticing through his observations of his hives. He worried about pesticides and the infamous Varroa mite. The colony that he tended collapsed along with many others in the region during the NATO bombings of Serbia in the 1990’s. He passed away shortly afterwards, leaving me an inheritance of 500 kilos of honey that was exposed to radiation and unsuitable for consumption.
I have been doing research on the plight of bees for over 12 years now and have made various works on this increasingly timely topic. This current series of works continues with my daily practice of drawing queens. I learned from my grandfather that every hive has two queens, a sexually mature queen “in charge” and an emergency queen as a backup. I alternate queen drawings with formal, repetitive mark making watercolour studies of the honeycomb.

All images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Gandy gallery