Symbiosis with Bees

“One day after school, I took a box of matches stolen from my home and picked up a big tree stick, ready to ignite the fire. Maybe it was cold and wet on the mountain, the tree stick was damp, or maybe I was really clumsy when I was young. I couldn’t light it. Seeing the whole box of matches almost ran out, and finally saw a little spark from the tree stick. After the moss burned, there was white smoke and a smell of choking grass ash. Perhaps I was too focused on the matter of ignition, I didn’t pay attention to the surroundings. It took a while from the corner of my eye to realize a huge bee circling around me, and I was so frightened that I dropped the stick in my hand and rushed home. The expedition was stopped for a few days, but I couldn’t bear it and wanted to find out what happened. Every day I went home from school, I would lie on the side of the bushes and watch. After a long time, my courage slowly grew. It turned out that the hive was built in a place where the entrance of the cave was not too deep. In the cracks of the rocks, some bees occasionally come in and out (after studying bees, I realized that this may be a local kind of bumblebee). When I was a child, I had the nickname ‘Sun Wukong’(the main character of the Chinese novel “Journey to the West'')of Luojia Mountain. I caught countless kinds of ‘demons’ such as ‘centipede demons’, ‘cricket demons’ every day. This was the first time I have met the 'Bee Damon'. I quickly took off my hat and school uniform, and I was wearing only the green sweater knitted by my mother. I tied the school uniform on my head with only my eyes exposed. I squatted at the entrance of the hole and waited patiently. After squatting for a long time, I finally buckled the one that fell on the leaf with my hat, and hurriedly put it in a glass bottle at home, and covered it with gauze, and put it on the corner of the windowsill beam in the backyard. I spend a lot of time feeding this bee, collecting leaves, flowers, honey, crickets, and bugs from the mountains, and even the millet fed to the chickens at home to feed it, I also reluctantly took out a piece of red braised pork belly from my lunchbox to feed it, but the bee died within a short time. I had to go to the air-raid shelter and wait for another bee when I was free, and grab one back every few times..."

Ren Ri was born in 1984 in Harbin, China. He studied Fine Art at Tsinghua University before receiving his master’s degree at the Saint-Petersburg Herzen State University in Russia. He earned his Ph.D. from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and a master’s degree from the Media Lab of MIT. The above text is excerpted from Ren Ri's article "Bee Demon" which reviewed his childhood experience. Ren Ri began to learn beekeeping in 2006 and became a professional beekeeper. He no longer adopted the childhood "feeding braised pork" method of beekeeping. At the same time, based on a full understanding of the habits of bees, he began to co-create with bees in compliance with the pattern of life of bees and the organization of bee colonies. He regarded it as a way of symbiosis with bees. The bees raised by Ren Ri are Italian bees (Apis mellifera ligustica). The number of bee colonies varies from 20 to 40 boxes every year. The bee population will be swarmed and replaced by a new queen bee about every 2 to 3 years. The bee colony has developed into the sixth generation. The life of a bee includes four stages: egg (1 to 3 days), larva (4 to 9 days), pupa (10 to 11 days), and adult (20 days), and emerge from its cell in 21 days. Bees are social insects, a colony consists of a queen bee and up to ten thousand worker bees. During the breeding period, there are tens to hundreds of drone bees. The drone bee is responsible for mating with the queen bee, while the worker bees have their own division of labor———collecting nectar, brewing nectar, and raising offspring of the queen bee... After about one-week-old worker bees consume nectar, they produce wax scales through the wax-secreting glands in their abdomens and turn them into beeswax by chewing and mixing with the secretions of the mandibular glands. Beeswax mainly contains esters, free acids, free alcohols, and hydrocarbon compounds. It is solid at room temperature, insoluble in water, soft in quality, and strong in plasticity. It is used to store honey and build honeycombs. Worker bees secrete 1 kg of beeswax and need to consume more than 3 kg of honey. Bees use beeswax to build honeycombs, and a few to dozens of honeycombs form a beehive.

The main element of Ren Ri's creation is beeswax, which is the basic material for the formation of the hive, it is also the organizational structure of the bee colony and the building of the bee colony. From the perspective of the integrity of the organism, beeswax is not only a material, it is also an extension of the bee collective, such as the exoskeleton structure of insects that wraps the internal soft organs. Similarly, the honeycomb composed of hexagonal beeswax is also the "skeleton" and "matrix" of the bee. It is inseparable from the bee and constitutes the biological and functional integrity of the bee. Ren Ri does not use beeswax as a sculpture material (such as heating beeswax to make candles), but cooperates with the natural process of bees producing wax, building combs, and repairing combs without secondary processing. Therefore, in this process, it is necessary to consider not only the needs of humans, but also the needs of bees, and conform to the laws of nature. The energy conversion of the bee colony depends on the supply of plants and nectar, and the growth of plants depends on the natural environment, climate, temperature, rainfall, and other factors related to time, space, and seasons. For example, bees produce more wax in spring and summer, and when the weather gets cold, they start to prepare for overwintering. If the work is not finished yet, it needs to start again in the spring of the next year, so sometimes the work will take several springs and summers. When the nectar source is sufficient, the volume of his work will be larger and the appearance is fuller, and when the nectar source is scarce or the temperature becomes cooler, the volume of the work will be relatively small. To get close to specific nectar plants, the artist will also migrate according to the seasons, looking for lychees and longan in the south, and locust trees and jujube trees in the north.

This kind of sculpture concept and working method originated from Ren Ri’s reflection on the relationship of shaping when he was studying sculpture at university: "At that time, the sculpture was more about concrete materials, such as mud, wood, stone, and other materials. When the sculpture was completed, the life of the object ended. I tried to find a living thing, a living body, it would continue to grow. I participate in the growth process of this living body, it will not be completely transformed by human will, so I cannot control it. The bee population has a high degree of sociality and has its own rules and systems. Humans cannot completely control bees. Bees will not compromise because the artist wants to make a specific shape. I must adjust my participation according to the preferences of the bee. With my long-term observation and cognition of the behavior of bees, I think that I have mastered a language for communicating with bees. I can understand what the bees want by observing their specific behaviors, fanning wings and arrangement rules, etc. so that I can give them what they want accordingly.”

Regarding the impact of creation on the bee colony, Ren Ri believes that his bee feeding method is very conducive to the development of the bee colony in the long run. On the one hand, he does not need to extract honey and pollen from the bees and give them in large quantities when the bees need food, to ensure that the bee colony has enough food to survive and multiply. On the other hand, he modified the beehives to enrich the space of the bee colony activities and facilitate the beekeepers to observe and study the activities of the bees in his creation. In the long term, it will help the bee colony to adapt to the environment and even lead to the evolution of populations: "Since I first started beekeeping with only a few boxes of bees, it is now the sixth generation of queen bees, the number of bees has also expanded to dozens of colonies, and the structure of the bee flora is also very healthy."

In the early stage of his creation, Ren Ri focused on metaphors, comparing the operation of bee colonies with human society, and later on how to integrate human life and bee life naturally, how to infiltrate different life logics in shaping. What the artist pursues is to get rid of the representation of bees by the human knowledge system, and use the law of life of bees as the starting point for thinking about the visual aspects of the work, and let the bee colony participate in the structural design and transformation of time and space, rather than pre-setting the shape or symbolic meaning. It is completed with beeswax as the filling material. With the deepening of creation, the concept of the work and the way of formation become more and more deeply unified with the life composition of bees.

Ren Ri's first bee series, "Yuansu I: The Origin of Geometric Series", includes multiple maps. First, the artist carved a flat relief map on the honeycomb, and then he put the map into the hive. The bees will continue to shape the map according to the needs of living and nurturing their offspring, making the map have ups and downs. In the artist’s view, the height difference of the terrain of the human map is a kind of abbreviated abstraction of nature simulated by statistical calculations, and the hexagonal parallel and sheet-shaped honeycombs are the geometry of the life system of bees and the bee algorithm has been in dynamic change. This kind of flow is like beeswax with changing soft and hard, always in a biconditional state. He intends to mix the two methods.

The amount of beeswax required for the work is determined according to the size of the work. For a large map about 1.5 meters in length and 1.2 meters in width, in addition to the beeswax required to make an initial relief map model, the bee colony needs to secrete about 1,300 grams of beeswax to interact with the map model. A small map with a length of about 0.6 meters and a width of about 0.45 meters requires a colony of bees to secrete about 260 grams of beeswax. In Ren Ri’s experience, the nature of beeswax is very stable at room temperature not exceeding 40 degrees Celsius. After the work is finished, it will undergo some preservative treatment, and then be sealed and stored, no special measures are required.

For the bee colony, the map that the artist puts in the beehive is an extraneous matter, and it takes some time for them to complete the stress response, that is, the process of bee colony adaptation. It also depends on the characteristics of different bee colonies and the personality of the queen bee. Biologically, the aggressiveness of a bee colony is often related to the species, the pheromone released by the worker bees, and the amount of pheromone released by the queen bee, as well as the external environment, such as the invasion frequency of toads, mice, nest moths, and other invaders. The above factors will determine the intensity of the production and transmission of these chemicals in the colony, which is the "character" of the colony and queen bee. Some queen bees have a high degree of acceptance of extraneous matters, and soon continue to construct based on the original map. Some queen bees have difficulty accepting extraneous matters and often lead the colony to destroy the map and remove them.

Every seven days, the artist randomly changed the position by throwing a dice. When the direction of the box changes, the gravitational tendency of the honeycomb will change, and the bee colony must re-adjust the structure of the honeycomb so that the shape of the honeycomb will deviate from the original trajectory. When the flowering period is over, the honeycomb is complete, and the work is complete. According to the characteristics of different queen bees, the degree of extension and complexity of the works are different, "You must first be familiar with the habits of bees, and then you need to have long-term contact with these bee colonies to understand the characteristics of these queen bees. Some queen bees are relatively close to people and are easy to cooperate with. I will choose such colonies to do my work. The queen bee can switch between different spaces, I just induce the queen bee to come to a specific location, not by force. In addition, the bee colony is not completely controlled by people, they will build honeycombs or choose not to build honeycombs completely according to the surrounding environment and season. This is beyond my control. All I do is start my work in the right season and flowering period, and then interact with the bees, the creation process is done by bees."

The queen bee is the center of the bee colony. By sending out pheromones to control the bee colony, the bee colony will respond according to the position and behavior of the queen bee. In the performance of "Yuansu III +2", the artist first used the queen bee pheromone to mark the path on the ground and then lay on the ground to induce the queen bee to pass through his abdomen. Because the queen bee hormones leave tracks on the ground and the artist's body, the bee colony communicates information and reacts to each other. The movement of the bee colony and the artist's body form an interesting dynamic graphic——the colony first spreads out, then forms a structure, and then gathers together to form a momentum to follow the queen bee through the artist's body. The behavior lasted about 5 hours in total.

“Beecolor series”(2016)

The color of beeswax is generally affected by factors such as bee species, nectar source, storage time, etc. In this series of creations, Ren Ri provided natural pigments for bees in different areas of the honeycomb based on experience and understanding of bee activities, and at different times set the range of the movable area of the bees in the segment to form the color gradient of the honeycomb.

Continuing the discussion on the influence of gravity on biological behavior and honeycomb structure in the "Yuansu II" series, the "Hyperparallel" series focuses on the influence of magnetic fields on bees. In theory, bees can build a honeycomb with a perfectly parallel structure, but the shape of the honeycomb is not uniform due to the influence of external factors such as the uneven distribution of the object's magnetic field. By applying a magnetic field, the artist made the honeycomb parallel and formed a perfect arc. The area with special color in the work is to mark the main activity area of the queen bee.

Ren Ri studied for a master's degree in science at the MIT Media Lab from August 2018 to May 2020. He was committed to the research of technology transformation in design, multimedia, and technology, including the use of robotic arms and mechanical devices to induce the behavior of bees, use artificial queen bee to guide bees to build honeycombs, and use elements such as nano-gold to induce bees to build honeycombs and change the behavior of bees. He regarded technology as an important means of protecting bees and enriching the symbiotic relationship between bees and the outside world: "The trend of technological innovation and invention is unavoidable for mankind and is an inevitable trend of human development. So the question now is how to make better use of technology to help nature and other species better adapted to the current environment. For example, by providing nano-gold elements to bee colonies, combined with multi-gravity flipping to test the behavior changes of bees, I found that bees will autonomously add gold elements to their hive as reinforcement materials of the honeycomb. The shape of the previous honeycomb will be changed, the volume will become larger, there will be more vent channels inside, and the honeycomb will use gold elements to strengthen the honeycomb structure as the direction of gravity reverses. At the same time, due to the larger size of the honeycomb, the bees will create many shortcuts in the interior and constantly look for this substance in the outside world, which is very interesting. This structural change itself helps the bees adapt to more complex external environments, such as human industrial environments. This helps bees to establish a symbiotic relationship with various elements in the outside world, creating new possibilities for evolution. "

Ren Ri will continue the research and creation of the combination of science and art. In his view, art and science have no strict boundaries: "Scientific research can also become a part of art, and the way art can be generated can also be scientific, but in different degrees of depth. When art is deeply and concretely researched on a certain issue, it will naturally enter the field of science. At the same time, scientific research will also involve many artistic issues. For example, biological art sometimes uses a new technology and scientific approach, but it is expressed in an artistic way. In fact, both science and art are discussing the latest issues related to human beings, but the scientific method is more specific, art tends to raise questions from a macro perspective, throwing out an insight. They are equally important. "