In the Christian tradition, the bee is also held in high regard. Today, the most well-known of these allegories is probably the prophecy of the land that flows with milk and honey, adopted in Morazzone’s painting “The Honey Madonna”. Just as well-known is Samson’s riddle “Out of the eater came forth food, And out of the strong came forth sweetness” (Judges 14:14).

The sweetness of honey was also seen as a parable for rhetorical skill, as illustrated in Saint Ambrose’s miracle of the bee, painted by Bergognone. Saint John’s prophecy on the Island of Patmos is also said to have tasted sweet like honey. Wax, on the other hand, was used in the church as an ingredient to make candles and for votive offerings due to the perceived chastity of bees.

While certain animals such as the meek lamb or the cunning fox are associated with only one character trait, the characteristics with which the bee is associated are numerous and at times contradictory. The bee is regarded as hard-working, helpful, tidy, chaste, docile, virtuous, wise, obedient, and invested in the common good, but also as both defensive and aggressive. The bee produces sweet honey, but its sting is painful. Its life is lived according to the principles of collaboration and equitable division of labour, yet it gathers around a queen.

The symbolism of the bee varies according to era and context and does not always correspond to current conceptions; nowadays, we tend to cast a critical eye on the anthropomorphisation of animals. Yet despite this, stories of the bee continue to enrich our world. In the fourth section you will be able to explore six thematic blocks: the pain of love, virtuousness, the four seasons, sense of taste, social bees, and the moral abyss.

Now it is time to discover two illustrated fables about the bee written by Aesop, the legendary poet of antiquity. In one fable, he explains why the bee loses its life when it stings a human, and in the other, he contrasts the bee with the bear as a paragon of patience. In Sebastian Brant’s “Ship of Fools”, the bee and the bear meet once again, this time within a parable about taking timely precautionary action. We find another confrontation in La Fontaine’s fable of the hornets and the bees, which serves an example of the prudent administration of justice. And finally, Wilhelm Busch’s “The Little Honey Thieves” and Waldemar Bonsel’s “Maya the Bee” take us into the long nineteenth century.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the bee barely played a role in art. This changed, however, in the latter three decades of the century, when artists began to explore the use of wax and honey as materials in their art and to investigate the social behaviours of bees. To conclude the exhibition, we will now present a selection of such artworks that touch on the themes of this exhibition.

In 1977, Joseph Beuys initiated a site for discussion at documenta 6 with his piece Honey Pump at the Workplace. For him, honey was a living substance, which he understood to be analogous to living thought. Stephanie Lüning’s wax casts are moulded by flowing water, while Lea Grebe explores the processes that take place inside a beehive. Aladin Borioli traces the tradition of the Bannkorb or charm basket, which was used to ward off evil spirits, and Rebecca Horn’s spatial installation raises a number of important questions, such as our own individual responsibility for the bee population.