an ongoing project by
SUSAN MEDYN
I collaborate with honey bees to make art.
Bees, like us, are natural architects and builders. I feel it’s important for us and our ecological survival to slow down, and to understand nature on a deeper level. In this hand-on eco art endeavor I have spent months and years figuring out how bees think and work architecturally.
Through this practice and its amazing results, I hope to build awareness of the significance of sustaining the environment and insect life in particular. Perhaps my work in collaboration with bees can encourage dialogue about the wondrous possibilities of working sensitively with the natural world.
— Susan Medyn
Eco Artist, Beekeeper
Selected Recent Works
Winged Reliquary, 2025
Monarch Reliquary, 2025
Poppy Pods (detail), 2025
Biotic Cycle, 2025
Shared Architecture, 2025
Tribute to Ukraine, 2025
Entomological Dialogue, 2025
More about the pieces
Bees were invited to interact with this scaffold, gradually filling the voids with honeycomb, creating an interwoven layer of wax cells that soften and blur the boundaries of the human-imposed design.
Suspended within the piece are delicate crystal drops and organic poppy pods, cherry branches with resin, a compound bees use for medicinal purposes as well as to entomb intruders. Each element was chosen for its visual and symbolic resonance. The juxtaposition of crystal, dried botanical forms, and organic wax speaks to cycles of transformation: blooming, decay, and rebirth.
Set within a wooden frame, the work becomes a window into a shared creative process—an ecosystem of intention, intuition, and improvisation.
Poppy Pods, 2025
This artwork is a composition that merges the precision of geometry with the wild intelligence of nature. Shaped rattan forms, resembling orbital diagrams, serve as the foundational structure—rigid, planned, and mathematical. Poppy seed heads were added as this is a source of pollen for bees. Note how one was attached by the bees and the other delicately deconstructed.
