Hanging around the house
Here we are Christmas day, albeit only by 7 minutes but nonetheless, Christmas day 2008. It has been raining pretty hard all day so I was sadly disappointed when I went out to my hives a few minutes ago and I didn’t hear anything. I thought it might be appropriate that if any of my colonies would be emitting a buzzing sound exactly at midnight on Christmas Eve it would be the Victorian Dollhouse hive.
In `Folklore of the Northern Counties`, states:
Bees are said at Christmas-time to hum a Christmas hymn. Thus
Rev. Hugh Taylor writes: "A man of the name of Murray died at
the age of ninety, in the parish of Earsdon, Northumberland. He
told a sister of mine that on Christmas Eve the bees assemble to hum a Christmas hymn and that his mother had distinctly heard
them do this on one occasion when she had gone out to listen for
her husband's return. Murray was a shrewd man, yet he seemed to believe this implicitly!"
- Thanks to Ettamarie Peterson
It’s funny because while I was out there earlier standing in the rain listen for a Christmas hymn I thought I heard something. It sounded a little like a hymn but all the same pitch. Perhaps …..? I thought to myself as I looked up and saw the buzzing electric heater above the bees. I wanted so badly to believe.
Way back in the summer of 2008 I worked on a show with an art consultant name Chandra Cerrito to transform the small experimental gallery at the Sonoma County Museum into a show called BEeING. The idea was to show a whole new body of work based on the European Honeybee. As part of that show I had arranged to install a fully furnish Victorian dollhouse in which I would release a feral colony of bees. The basic idea was to offer a wild colony a place to build a home; a home inside of a home. I had done numerous other free-form observation hives installed in gallery spaces but this piece had a few obstacles. I wasn’t sure how I could get the bees to move and build comb through-out the entire space, there are four rooms divided by two floors. I ended up cutting three ovals about the size of a dollar bill on the backside of the house and on the adjoining wall upstairs. I hung some drawn comb on some custom made frames above and beside the openings which the bees seemed to accept pretty well. They could have done better because by leaving the upstairs they left behind some brood that I later had to remove. The other major obstacle was that the entire front of the dollhouse was glass. Since bees are attracted to light we had to manipulate the galley lighting so the piece would be lit well but not distract the bees. Still there always seemed to be a few hardwired bees determined to get out through the glass. As always there is the issue of positive and negative pressure in the building effecting how well the bees come and go through the vent tubes to the outdoors. Esthetically it ended up being better to have to vent tubes in the dollhouse, one on either side of the structure on both the first and second story. During the two month duration of the exhibit the bees mostly used the port directly closest to their brood chamber on the bottom floor. I imagine this is where the queen decided to locate because it was the least exposed area in the house where she could feel comfortable. Although for the first few days the bees were occupying the house directly after release they were all clustered directly opposite in the upper left of the space. Bees…..? Queens…..? I never second guess them.
For the first few months the colony did surprisingly well in their new environment, they built a little fresh comb, started raising babies, bringing in pollen, and storing nectar.
I was having the gallery staff feed them 50:50 so im sure that had a big part to do with the new comb. At one point I got a call from the museum explaining that one of the staff had spilled an entire quart of sugar water into the bottom of the house. They explained it in New Orleans terms of flooding the entire bottom floor. When I got to the museum to check on the situation the person who unleashed the sugary flood gate told me she had forgotten to screw the perforated lid on the jar, the equated it not needing a lid like her cat’s water feeder. With that explanation how could I blame her, although it was a hellish sticky mess.
After the exhibit I brought the bees home, at the time the cluster was about the size of a small cantaloupe and starting to prepare for winter. Initially after insulating the glass front I put the dollhouse in my studio space which was a mistake because there was far too much bee activity. As a seasoned beekeeper I wasn’t terrible fussed by the bees – and come to think of it I was the only one really effected as the bees vented directly next to my studio door. It was my Apis-sensitive neighbors that were the problem. I sort of have to keep the bees on the down-low round here since being reported to the city code enforcement twice this year. I have no recollection of it but apparently when I started running the Napa Valley Bee Company out of my home I signed something saying I wouldn’t raise more than a half dozen pitbull terriers, keep roosters, welcome hobos or prostitutes, race monster trucks, manufacture methamphetamine, or keep bees. luckily the folks down at the Ag department know I’m good on most the above, I just have a little problem with the bees.
However, just between you me and this blog I still have a couple hives here that have amazing genetic stock I am watching AND the dollhouse hive because it needs to stay dry. See, it goes to show…. whither you live in a dollhouse or a real house, if you have bees keep em’ to yourself.
Check out the pictures to see how the hive built out over the past year.
Merry Christmas!
Guest-curated by Chandra Cerrito
Napa artist Rob Keller melds bee life and human domestic life this fall with his installation entitled Be(e)ing. Highlighting the interrelationship of humans and pollinators, Keller presents a colony of live bees housed in a Victorian dollhouse. The house, which is connected by a vented tube to the outside world, is placed amidst sights and sounds in which visitors can contemplate the life of bees and their keepers.
Dollhouse installation September 20, 2007 at the Sonoma County Museum
Dollhouse October 10, 2008 at the Carnaros apiary.
Mother and father split floor view 11/07
Mother and father split floor view 10/08
Child on bench at installation
Child on bench one year later
New furniture upon release of bees
Ottoman one year later
Bees in the kitchen while still in Sonoma - they built up quickly considering they arrived at the museum in September.
The house is still fairly clean a month after the bees were released into the house. Luckily, the bees were very docile in nature. I was able to open the glass front and clean house twice while they were on exhibit.
Even to this day I am able to open the front glass to get these macro shots, really gentle bees.
I love this shot, notice how the bees propolised the candle stick holder to the table and built wax around the candle.
Check out pops..... they're ripping his cloths off!
This what it looks like on the bottom floor after the bees rip the wallpaper off and chew up the doll's coths.
This is how the hive sits today. Rope holds the insulation over the glass on the opposite side.
Bee in flight flying around the dollhouse.
Ant infestation I had to rectify.
Proplised the vents closed. I will make sure to replace and allow adequate ventilation to prevent chalk brood in the spring.
Until the next bee exhibit.....
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