Melissa P.'s Honey Heart!

Honey Bee Love
My first Heart piece I did was a Beekeeping theme. I have been a Beekeeper for 6 years, and I am always excited to share my love for Bees. I used multiple pieces of media to reflect this theme that would directly relate to the art. Starting with the middle is the Queen Bee Cage where the Queen is placed inside, and then put in another larger screened box with the other 20,000 Honeybees. During transportation in this screened box, the Honeybees get acquainted with their new Queen and her pheromones. If the Queen was just put in with the rest of the Honey Bees, they would kill her instantly because they know it’s not their Queen. The Queen Bee Cage is plugged with sugar candy so she has something to eat, and by the time she and the honeybees on the outside eat through it, they should be familiar with her pheromone and have accepted her as a new Queen. Since the bees are inside this screen box for sometimes a week, they start building their hive around the Queen.
Next we have the two yellow wax circles that were boiled down pieces of honeycomb where the dirt and garbage sank to the bottom of the pot, and the wax floats to the top. The two red and silver hive tools are a beekeepers necessity when going into a hive to inspect it. The hive tool is used to pry open the hive and lift out frames. Honey Bees close all gaps in the hive and make a glue like substance called propolis that seals the frames and box in place. The two wooden entrance reducers making the bottom shape of the heart are used mostly during the cold months to make sure there is only a small opening so the Honey Bees don’t get robbed of their honey storage, from other hives during the winter. The dried pine needles used in this piece are the material used in the smoker when going into the hives. The smoke is let off under and inside the hive, and the burnt pine needle smoke is stronger than their pheromones, and they are unable to communicate with each other and are in a daze until it’s out of the air. The background is wax foundation that is popped into wooden frames so the Honeybees can start building comb.
`This piece is near symmetrical balance. It has Organic Shape with the pine needles, bees wax and honeycomb. It also has Geometric Shape with the yellow circle wax blocks, and hexagons in the honeycomb in the middle and the background. This piece has warm colors with the yellow beeswax circles on each side and red hive tools. It also has some neutrals with the black background wax foundation, and the brown wooden entrance reducers and honeycomb. There is lots of repetition in the background of the wax foundation with the hexagons, and the line breaks separating the different pieces of wax foundation. There is repetition in the pine needles and lines with the needles coming off the branches in all different directions. There is some value with the way the light is shining on the pieces and creating shadowing on the bottom from the wooden entrance reducers. The focal point is the queen cage in the middle wrapped with the honey comb around it in the shape of a heart. Your eyes also get drawn to the bright red and yellow used with the hive tools and wax blocks.