Short story of a honeybee silver necklace

Bees and honey take me right to childhood memories. We used to spend summers in the country, in Provincia de Buenos Aires, (Rawson for those of you who are familiar with the area) My great uncle owned an apiary and sold honey and other bee derived products. He was a doctor with a profound knowledge of the almost miraculous effects that honey has on good health. He sold the honey squeezed in two or three layers of plastic bags, every package had a four page flyer with sweet recipes showing how to replace sugar with honey in delicious desserts and cakes, quite a few interesting ways to solve coughs, colds and such with bee elixir, and some knowledgeable quotes of great men and old sages. Of course the honey was of the ones that harden because it was absolutely pure.

I will never forget the dense smell of the warehouse, the thick sticky air, the honey, the propolis, the endless buzzing of the bees. I was too little to investigate further at that time, but I kept forever the love and respect for the bees, the honey and everything related to this wonder of nature. When Roxana from Illuminated Perfume suggested to our Artisans Gallery Team to create special items honoring bees, to blog it forward creating a chain of bee postings, and thus creating awareness of the fact that bees are endangered, I didn't have a second of a doubt.

This is the necklace I humbly created specially for this challenge, and some pictures of the steps of the process.

1 and 2 : Soldering the rings for the beehive, and the honeybee.

3 and 4 : Oxidizing parts of the body and wings for contrast, tumbler and ready.


These are many of the artists and artisans that participated in the bee project:
kathi rousell, seapinks, sewnNatural, glazedover, masaoms, polestar, knotoriginal, jealousydesign, twoknit, dragonhouseofyuen, illuminatedperfum

and these...moonovermaize, quercussilver, decoratethediva, sarahjohnafana, furiousdreams, blueterracotta, markhed, ixela, staroftheeast, pipinghotpapers, peylu


and these...justcharming, thejoyofcolor, lynncardwellpottery, terminy, threebluebee, oneclaybead, bluebicicletta, merritthyde, lulubugjewelry, sofino, slinkymalinkicat

As we are blogs bound together by this theme, check out Roxana's journal post from yesterday and don't forget to check tomorrow's post by Victoria at Furious Dreams.

Enjoy!