Negotiating the shape of the maps with bee colonies was arduous, after all, we can’t communicate. Of course, it was also empirically interesting. Recreating them by hand is a crazy idea. Oh well. At first, I was not satisfied with the effects of the work, I took the frame to be improved, placed it in a number of others in the body of the hive, and waited. The bee’s correction turned out to be merciless, my applied shape was erased, bitten to nothing, the patch was cleansed of human insidious manipulation. After all, the patch cells I had sealed were empty. And you need to know that such a cell is sealed only when the collected nectar is subjected to chemical processes of various enzymes and becomes honey with the appropriate water content, which the bees evaporate by raising the temperature in the hive. Honey is a hygroscopic substance and a tight, airtight seal prevents the honey from reabsorbing water. This is how prophetic cartography is created, a seal of land on a bee map.

I left the covered upper body of the hive empty. The bees built honeycombs in it according to their own architectural thought. The elliptical shapes climbing downwards form from sweated wax, and build them in a strictly defined way: they form a hanging cluster of wax bees, which, turned upwards, freeze motionless and exudate wax in the form of tiny plates, which, having chewed with their mandibles, make them useful as a nest building material. They put up a downward middle wall, according to which they coordinate work on others. The farther the patch tongue extends, the cells at the top are properly deepened and strengthened. Turning the lid upside down to better observe the natural construction process, I thought of a beekeeper from Araña Cave who could watch a wild swarm that, guided by the spirit of the hive, freely erected her city.

Michał Smandek