Scientific Illustration

la-reine-storms:

what to read

You can read it online here:

http://archive.org/details/abcxyzofbeecultu00root

compendium-of-beasts:

[Flies & bees.] (1833-1841)

via NYPL

arsvivendi:

Paper Mache Bee Models by Dr. Louis Thomas Jerôme Auzoux (1797-1880)

hartleart:

Sold my first print on Etsy, so I put up three new ones!

High quality, watercolor giclee prints of my insect watercolor paintings!

Check them out~

nowealth-noruin:

For my sister’s birthday I painted her a bee. (I’m poor, so everyone gets drawings from me as presents and bees are my current fascination.) This lovely fellow is Thyreus nitidulus, the Neon Cuckoo Bee or Cloak and Dagger Bee. It’s another Australian native that’s parasitic to the Blue Banded Bee (Amegilla cingulata). The females of this species lay their eggs in the burrows of Amegilla and when they hatch I believe they devour the Amegilla brood as well as the accumulated pollen stores, hence the “Cloak and Dagger” epithet.

Six hours, watercolours and references.

(via nowealth-noruin)

tachypomp:

howstuffworks:

How Bees Work

In the creation story of the Kalahari Desert’s San people, a bee carries a mantis across a river. The river is wide, and the exhausted bee eventually leaves the mantis on a floating flower. The bee plants a seed in the mantis’s body before dying, and the seed grows into the first human.

The San are not the only people to include bees in their myths and stories. According to Egyptian mythology, bees were created when the tears of the sun god Ra landed on the desert sand. The Hindu love god Kamadeva carries a bow with a string made of honeybees. Bees and their hives appear in religious imagery and royal regalia in multiple cultures, and people around the world use honey and pollen in folk medicine and religious observances.

The idea that there is something divine or mystical about bees isn’t confined to religion and mythology. Until the 17^th century, many people, including beekeepers, thought that bees reproduced spontaneously, without the aid of sexual reproduction. But in the 1660s, Jam Swammerdam examined a queen bee through a microscope and discovered female sex organs. Around the same time, Francesco Redi proved that maggots formed in meat only when flies had landed there. It became clear that bees and other insects reproduced by laying eggs, not by magic.

Even though they do not reproduce through autogenesis, or spontaneous generation, bees do exhibit many other traits found in stories and myths — traits that have led many cultures to view them with reverence or awe. This is particularly true of social bees, or the species that live in colonies. Social bees are organized, industrious and intelligent. They work diligently all summer in order to produce enough food to survive the winter. Social bees are clean and fastidious, and they arrange their lives around one central member of the hive — the queen.

But most bees aren’t social. They don’t live in hives or work together to support a queen. In this article, we’ll look at how social bees are different from solitary bees. We’ll also explore how bees make honey and examine the potential causes and effects of Colony Collapse Disorder.

Keep reading…

Fun fact: my first ever research project was in kindergarten and I researched bees.

(via sheerdarwinism)

cathylomax:

1950s Hermes bee print swimsuit

(via atelierentomologica)

nowealth-noruin:

Another bee: Osmia ribifloris, commonly known as the Blueberry Bee. This one is actually one part of a larger picture I’m painting for my friend Julia, but I liked this fellow so much that I thought I’d post him on his own.

Watercolours, 3 hours and no apologies for my sudden fixation with bees. :D

nowealth-noruin:

The making of Amegilla cingulata. 

This is mostly for my own reference but some of you may find it interesting also. You have to excuse the blurry photos. My camera didn’t focus properly and I didn’t notice on my tiny screen.

What’s not pictured is the composite sketches I did because I couldn’t find a clear picture of the stationary bee from the perspective that I wanted. There was quite a bit of time spent messing around getting the wings in the right position without completely obscuring the abdomen and thorax - arguably the most visually interesting parts of the bee! 

The first picture shows some of the guidelines I put in to help me scale the bee, put all the right bits in the right places &c. The rest depict the process of layering the “paint” (I make swatches on scrap paper using watercolour pencils and dip a damp brush into that so I’ve got more control over how much colour is going down, when).

I think I need to invest in some gouache paints. Next time I’d like to get a finer grain with the hairs.

nowealth-noruin:

Because I love bees and I’m trying to teach myself to use mediums other than biro (with mixed success).

Two native Australian species: Ctenocolletes smaragdinus (Green Burrowing Bee) and Amegilla cingulata (Blue-Banded Bee), respectively.

Watercolour pencils and about 6 hours each. Many, many references used.