Milk and Honey Day 11: Why Bees?

Every spring, our azalea bushes would be covered in bees.

Not one or two. Hundreds of them.

You could hear the entire bush humming before you even got close. Most people avoided it completely, but I used to stand right in the middle of it watching them move through the flowers. I wasn’t scared of them. Honestly, I thought they were sweet.

That probably sounds insane to people who are terrified of bees but even as a kid I was fascinated by bees.

But the older I get, the more symbolic that memory feels to me.

Even as an adult, bees land on me all the time and I’m happy to spend some time with them.

Most bees are actually incredibly gentle creatures unless they feel threatened. Honey bees especially do not sting casually because defending the hive often comes at an enormous cost to them. They are not aggressive in the way people imagine. And yet somehow they have become one of the most feared creatures in modern life.

There’s something deeply moving to me about a creature so necessary to life being viewed primarily through fear.

Especially because our entire food system depends on them.

Flowers, crops, fruit trees, gardens, entire ecosystems. Life multiplies because bees quietly move through the world carrying pollen from one place to another. Tiny creatures pollinating fields they will never personally harvest.

I love that symbolism.

The deeper I got into building this collection, the more bees started feeling less like decoration and more like visual theology.

They are industrious, purposeful, community driven creatures. Everything they do supports the health and survival of the hive. And interestingly enough, the hive itself is matriarchal. Everything revolves around the queen.

As a single mother rebuilding a life while raising three kids, I don’t think that connection resonated accidentally.

I think there’s a kind of feminine strength that often goes unnoticed because it doesn’t always look loud or powerful from the outside. Women quietly carry enormous emotional and physical weight every single day. Nourishing people. Holding families together. Creating warmth. Building homes. Regulating emotions. Caring for everyone else while still trying to survive themselves.

A lot of that labor is invisible.

But invisible doesn’t mean insignificant.

Bees reminded me of that immediately.

And honestly, I think artists function similarly too.

We move through the world carrying pieces of beauty, emotion, memory, hope, and meaning from place to place. Pollinating things quietly. Leaving traces behind us that help something else bloom later.

That idea sits all through this work.

This collection is rooted in themes of provision, rebuilding hope, transition, wilderness seasons, and learning how to create beauty while life still feels unresolved. The bees fit naturally into that world because they represent both fragility and resilience at the same time.

Softness with boundaries.
Gentleness with purpose.
Sweetness that still knows how to protect what matters.

And then there’s the fact that blue bees exist.

“Blue In the Garden” by BekHarris

Real blue bees.

I remember discovering them years ago and being completely delighted by it. Bright metallic blue like they were painted by someone showing off a little.

That detail honestly says something important about creation to me.

God did not make a purely functional world.

He made beauty on purpose.

He made flowers that smell incredible, sunsets that stop people in their tracks, birds that look hand painted, iridescent beetles, oceans that glitter, and tiny blue bees hidden in gardens most people never slow down enough to notice.

That’s part of why beauty matters so much to me in my work.

Not because decoration is shallow, but because beauty reminds people there is still wonder left in the world. It interrupts despair. It softens people. It creates room to breathe again.

I think a lot of people are emotionally exhausted right now. The world is loud, fast, artificial, and constantly demanding something from us. Most people are carrying far more than they admit while quietly starving for softness, warmth, meaning, and spaces that actually feel alive.

That’s part of what I want these paintings to become.

Not just artwork hanging on a wall, but physical reminders that there is still sweetness here. Still light. Still life. Still goodness worth cultivating.

The bees became part of that visual language very naturally.

Tiny creatures carrying the future of entire fields on their backs without even realizing it.

Honestly, I think there’s something holy about that.