Deborah’s Bee Book.

It’s Christmas Eve and I know now that my bees have safely reached their destination and my client is happy. As a small gift for her I had decided to “just” make a little hand made book, containing prints of all the bees and a little info about them all.  I, like any other artist and designer should know better. “Just” as a creative concept does not exist.  So being pushed for time, dealing with an uncooperative computer and printer and rising panic, it was a bit of a rush. 

Book making, near death by a thousand cuts.

One of the trickiest things is working out the pagination to make sure everything prints properly on double sided paper. I printed the pictures separately which was nice as I cut them out and “tipped” them in, like the old fashioned picture books that always had the colour plates separately printed. I seemed to cut and trim a million bits of paper and the odd fingernail… and then another million for the mistakes I made..sigh…more haste etc…yes, I know.  

I found some paper with little gold cicadas to cover the boards,  as close as I could get to bees in the time, and some honeycomb paper for the inside. Each page had to be creased 3 times to fold properly and finally, Japanese stab binding is easy, if you punch the holes big enough which I failed to do first time round.

I made a quick “spare” everyday book because the blue book is fragile and, of course, the second one was a breeze!! Labels too for the back of the pictures.

Just before final packing I took a snap of the book, with the original painting of the Blue Banded Bee, the labels for the back of the pictures, brushes and paint tubes etc to give things a bit of scale.  The little book is 4 x 5.25 inches with 36 pages.

At the end of this 4 month project I am definitely feeling bee-reft (sorry) without my little winged companions, but there will be more soon and I could always make another book… maybe.

By the way, “Deborah” in Hebrew means “bee”… :)

Bee No 10: Australian Blue Banded Bee: Amegilla cingulata

For this project I am putting together a set of bees which hopefully will show their diversity and beauty, so variety in colour and shape and pattern is important. There are many different species from all around the world and as you would expect Australia has some unusual native bees.

This is the very beautiful Blue Banded Bee which has pale iridescent blue instead of yellow stripes and digs burrows in soft sandstone or clay for their nests.This is another solitary bee from the same family as the Hairy Footed Flower Bee from the last post.

The facts:

CLASS: Insecta
ORDER: Hymenoptera, Bees, wasps, ants and sawflies.
SUPERFAMILY: Apoidea. Bees and some wasps.
FAMILY: Apidae. Bees.
TRIBE: Anthophorini
GENUS:Amegilla
SPECIES: Amegilla cingulata

This website, www.aussiebee.com is a mine of information and is one of many which does its very best to encourage the public to understand and cherish their native bees, underlining their importance in pollination. This is another bee which performs “Buzz Pollination” (see my buzz pollination post here) and is now being seriously considered as a pollinator for commercial crops of tomatoes, eggplants and kiwifruit, as well as native plants such as Hibbertia, Senna and Solanum.

Up until now, tomato growers in Australia have had to use electronic fertilization methods and steps were being taken to import some European Bumble bees to help with the task. However the Blue Banded Bee has proved to be very capable and a breeding programme is now being developed.

Do watch this delightful short film from Aussiebee and see the males jostling for position on top of the twig, with a lot of cross leg waving. They will gather together here to rest..if they can agree..

Where and how bees rest at night is a fascinating subject and for another post, but these bees will gather together clinging onto twigs with their jaws.

Here is a photo by Anna Tambour of a " sleeping" blue banded bee from her post "The Sleeping Bees" which is lovely, as is her blog, Medlar Comfits here. I particularly like this as it shows her finger nail and gives you an idea of the size of these beautiful bees.

She also includes this quote from another site. Yallaroo Wildlife
"Unfortunately many gardeners have been conditioned to reach for poisons as soon as they see something with six legs and wings." Which is probably worth putting at the bottom of every post about bees

This bee had to show off its beautiful stripes. Also, its wings are much more transparent and lighter in colour than some others.

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Bee No 10: The Australian Blue Banded Bee, Amegilla cingulata

Watercolour on Arches HP, size 3.5 inches