these are gorgeous. 

Beijing-based artist Ren Ri bases his work around the relationship between humans and nature. This thinking has led him to an unconventional collaborator in his fascinating set of sculptures - honeybees. Ri choose to work with the insects and their wax, although it’s not the easiest medium to use because it’s unstable and can change shape and temperature. But, that’s the gamble that Ri takes, and it complements the fact that he bases his work around the element of chance.

The artist first began beekeeping in 2008 and two years later felt that his knowledge of it was enough to start working on Yuansu I: The Origin of Geometry, which is a collection of maps made in beeswax. Yuansu II is a continuation on this theme, and sculptures are embedded in transparent plastic polyhedrons. In order to induce the insects to create symmetrical wax sculptures, the queen bee is kept at the center of the geometric space. This causes the bees to gather and start building around the center. Every seven days Ri changed the gravity of the developing honeycomb by rotating the box on a different side, determined by a throw of dice.

These beautifully-peculiar sculptures are the result of what happens when man and nature work together in harmony.

Portuguese designer Susana Soares has developed a device for detecting cancer and other serious diseases using trained bees. The bees are placed in a glass chamber into which the patient exhales; the bees fly into a smaller secondary chamber if they detect cancer. 

Scientists have found that honey bees - Apis mellifera - have an extraordinary sense of smell that is more acute than that of a sniffer dog and can detect airborne molecules in the parts-per-trillion range. 

Bees can be trained to detect specific chemical odours, including the biomarkers associated with diseases such as tuberculosis, lung, skin and pancreatic cancer.

“The bees can be trained within 10 minutes,” explains Soares. “Training simply consists of exposing the bees to a specific odour and then feeding them with a solution of water and sugar, therefore they associate that odour with a food reward.”

Once trained, the bees will remember the odour for their entire lives, provided they are always rewarded with sugar. Bees live for six weeks on average.

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