List of artists using bees

List of artists using bees refers to contemporary artists who incorporate bees or beekeeping practices into their artwork. These artists utilize natural bee activities such as honeycomb construction, beeswax sculpting, and live bee interactions to create artifacts that explore themes of ecology, nature, and human-animal collaboration.

Artists

• Mario Merz (b. 1925 – d. 2003, Italy) – An Italian artist associated with the Arte Povera movement, incorporated organic materials, including beeswax, into his sculptures and installations. His work often featured igloo-like structures and Fibonacci sequences, exploring the intersection of natural growth patterns and artistic form.
• Garnett Puett (b. 1959 in Hahira, GA; lives and works in Kona, HI) - A contemporary sculptor and fourth generation beekeeper, utilizing his bees, in part, as his artistic collaborators. This reciprocal relationship results in what he calls his apisculptures (api is the Latin for bee), in which sculpture, performance and insect partnership coalesce.
• Hilary Berseth (born 1979, USA) – Creates honeycomb-based sculptures by directing bee colonies to build structures within predetermined forms, exploring the organic collaboration between human intention and natural processes.
• Aganetha Dyck (born 1937, Canada) – A pioneer in collaborating with live bees to create sculptural works. Dyck allows bees to modify objects such as porcelain figurines and athletic equipment by encasing them in honeycombs. Her work explores the interdependence of humans and bees while emphasizing the fragility of ecosystems. Through her art, Dyck has raised awareness about the environmental challenges faced by pollinators, including colony collapse disorder.
• Anna Hulačová (born 1984, Czech Republic) – A sculptor known for incorporating beeswax and organic materials into her surrealist and folkloric-inspired sculptures. She uses live bees to build their wax combs inside specific parts of her concrete figurative sculptures or traditional carvings, often focusing on softer, vulnerable areas such as facial features.
• Pierre Huyghe (born 1962, France) – Integrated beehives into his conceptual and installation art, including his famous sculpture Untilled (2012), where a classical bust was transformed into a living beehive.
• Jan Karpíšek (born 1981, Czech Republic) – Places his drawings inside beehives, allowing bees to complete the artistic process by gnawing off parts of the drawings or altering the shape of the paper or canvas. This includes works such as portraits of controversial politicians like Trump, Putin, Babiš or Erdogan, where the bees destroy parts of their faces, adding a level of destruction and unpredictability to the image. His work also frequently explores the nature of the mind itself, reflecting on moments of awakening, the boundaries of perception, and the interplay between human consciousness and natural processes, as seen in his philosophical approach to beekeeping and painting.
• Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny (born 1979, Slovakia) – Renowned for his use of live bees to create "slow art" sculptures, Libertíny collaborates with nature by designing frameworks that bees populate with wax over time. This process results in intricate honeycomb structures that challenge the concept of authorship and explore themes of patience, nature's creativity, and the collaboration between humans and non-human organisms.
• Ava Róth (born 1970s, Canada) – A fiber artist who collaborates with bees to create mixed-media works where bees build their honeycomb directly onto textile and embroidery surfaces. Her art merges organic materials and intricate stitching, reflecting the synergy between natural and human-made processes.
• Bioni Samp (born 1970s, UK) – A multimedia artist and performer who incorporates the sounds of bees into his music and performance art. Bioni Samp creates electronic compositions using bee sounds, recorded vibrations, and hive activity, transforming natural bee noises into immersive sonic experiences.
• Mark Thompson (born 1940s, UK) – A performance artist and writer known for working extensively with live honeybees. His immersive performances and installations challenge conventional artistic boundaries by introducing living systems into museum spaces. In Immersion (1977–2005), Thompson allowed honeybees to swarm and cover his head entirely, exploring the relationship between human and insect. His Live-in Hive (1976) was a functional beehive allowing individuals to insert their heads into an active colony, emphasizing interspecies coexistence. In House Divided (1989), he tracked and collected bees from East and West Berlin, uniting wax from both sides of the Berlin Wall into an installation featuring a live beehive where he meditated with his head inside.
• Klaus Weber (born 1967, Germany) – Created Bee Paintings, where live bees "painted" white canvases with their excrement. Weber's work emphasizes collaboration between humans and bees, exploring themes of authorship, material semiotics, and the interplay between human and non-human agency. His Bee Paintings series also included collages that merged bee imagery with human figures, such as Sigmund Freud’s head.
• Ren Ri (b. 1984, China) - A Chinese artist and biologist, collaborates with bees to create honeycomb sculptures shaped by chance and interaction. He places queen bees in pre-designed frameworks, guiding worker bees to construct unpredictable geometric formations. His work examines the role of randomness in nature and art.