Beekeeping in Britain by Andrew Tyzack

Bees In Art: Raising Awareness About Pollinators In Peril
Andrew Tyzack and Debbie Grice Found Special Gallery To Celebrate Role Of Bees In Our Lives
Written By Todd Wilkinson

As artists who together operate The Land Gallery in England in East Yorkshire, they decided to do something about it: Put out a call to other artists and open a virtual gallery with procceds from the sale of artwork going to the cause of pollinator conservation. Tyzack has a particular insight into the problem, which in many parts of the globe has manifested itself as Colony Collapse Disorder. Outbreaks of CCD have been blamed on a virulent combination of mites and a fungus killing honey bees with weakened immune systems potentially caused by exposure to pesticides. Loss of habitat also is taking a serious toll on wild bees, with several species in the U.S. now imperiled.

Tyzack himself is a third-generation beekeeper, a practitioner of the apiary arts, husbanding his domestic honey hives to make sweet honey.

More and more, artists are stepping forward to aid in the cause of conservation. This effort on behalf of pollinators is similar to one led by biologist Kerry Kriger who founded Save The Frogs and has sponsored an art contest that is open to painters of all ages.

Bees in Art celebrates Hymenoptera, the order of insect that encompasses honey bees, bumblebees and related species. He said that he and Grice welcome artists in North America to contact him if they are interested in supporting bee conservation by making works available for sale...

For complete article please visit The Wildlife Art Journal.

Queen honeybee mezzotint engraving by Andrew Tyzack. Now available framed and matted. A limited edition of 60 printed on Hahnemühle acid free paper.

Andrew Tyzack’s ‘Drone honeybee’ mezzotint engraving features in April’s BBC Gardens Illustrated: “Celebrating our winged friends with a selection of themed garden products”. To see the photoshoot Blog entry by deputy art editor Niki Earp click here.

A new drawing and a new limited edition wood engraving of queen honeybees by Andrew Tyzack.

‘Honeybee queen’, pencil on paper, & ‘Queen honeybee’, wood engraving by Andrew Tyzack

The three postcards submitted by Andrew Tyzack to this year’s RCA Secret have been revealed and are available for viewing. Visit RCA Secret here.

RCA Secret 2009 Bombus hortorum by Andrew Tyzack

A brand new pencil drawing of honeybees by Andrew Tyzack. This drawing features the three ‘castes’ of bees found in a honeybee colony: the queen, the drones and the workers.

Honeybees by Andrew Tyzack

Andrew Tyzack has donated three original artworks to RCA Secret 2009. The Royal College of Art hosts RCA Secret annually to raise money to assist young artists studying at the RCA. The name of the artist who created each postcard is kept secret. Last year 2700 postcards went on show, and were sold in aid of the RCA’s Fine Art Student Award Fund. Last year many well known artists were exhibited, including: Grayson Perry, Anish Kapoor, Quentin Blake, Manolo Blahnik, Tracey Emin, Paula Rego, Mimmo Paladino, Yoko Ono and Olafur Eliasson.

Open at Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU from Friday 13 November until Friday 20 November 11-6pm, 11-8pm on Thursday 19 November. Free admission.

The cards will be sold to the public in a huge one-day sale, with each postcard costing just £40, regardless of whether it has been made by a famous name or a current art student. The Sale will be open on Saturday 21 November, 8am-6pm.

RCA Secret Postcard (reversed) by Andrew Tyzack

Andrew Tyzack is now preparing his bees for winter. The bees can store up to 20kg/50Ib of sugar syrup in the brood chamber. Now that the queen honeybee’s egg laying is much reduced, the empty brood cells provide plenty of storage room. The syrup is given to the bees with the use of a feeder, they collect and take the syrup down into the brood chamber and cap it with beeswax. During the cold winter months the bees cluster together and shiver their flight muscles to generate warmth. They consume the syrup to fuel this shivering.

Feeding honeybees with sugar syrup

Lastly a mouse guard is attached over the hive entrance. This prevents mice from entering the bee hive and constructing a nest alongside the bees. During the winter mice can eat their way through the stored syrup, beeswax combs and even the wintering bees.

Attaching a mouse guard to a British Modified National Bee Hive

The bees are then left alone until December, when they will be trickled with a dilute solution of oxalic acid. Which is a required procedure to reduce the numbers of Varroa Destructor Mites (Varroa jacobsoni), now endemic in Britain. Many scientists suspect Varroa as one of the causes of the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder.

Heather Honeycomb produced by Andrew Tyzack’s bees.

Sunset, North York Moors, September 2009

Andrew Tyzack has collected his honeybees from the North York Moors, returning them to his home apiary in East Yorkshire. At sunset the bees returned to the hives allowing the entrances to be closed. They were sufficiently heavy to make the thirty metres to the car quite a struggle. Suggesting that this year the bees have produced a decent crop of heather honey. Excellent crops from the moors only come once in every five years. Andrew will now begin the process of harvesting the honey from the hives.

Bees and Heather Honey

Sunrise and Beehives, North York Moors, August 2009

Bees in Art artist and curator Andrew Tyzack has taken his honey bees to the North York Moors, with the hope that they gather heather honey. Soon the ling heather (Calluna vulgaris) will be in full bloom, turning the moors into a panorama of beautiful violet. Andrew is a third generation beekeeper and every August he takes his beehives up to the moors. Weather permitting, his bees will fill the supers with honey. In September he'll bring the hives back to his home apiary to harvest the honey. Then he will feed and prepare his bees for winter.