the ongoing saga of minouette: My Bee SciArt

An on-going SciArt theme for me is artwork about bees. Here you will find all of my bee artworks in one place.

The Future of Pollination: Manufactured Ecosystems

I produced 15 works about the Future of Pollination for Manufactured Ecosystems. Our food sources and ecosystems around us are dependent on pollinators (mostly bees & other insects, some birds & mammals) but insects populations have lost huge numbers and many species altogether. Our future will be linked to their fate. This group show was exhibited at Zavitz Art Gallery at the University of Guelph, June 23 to August 7, 2025. Each of the visual artists produced work on various themes in various media about our ecological future looking forward the wake of climate change and habitat loss and at what we can learn from nature. Knowing that while the threats to pollination are global, all the specific issues and solutions are local, I decided that I would need to tell this story with an example rooted in a specific place. So I chose this place: southern Ontario, where I live and work and where Manufactured Ecosystems is based. My collection traced a range of possible future outcomes, from a utopian future where we make changes to foster or native pollinators (including increasing the tree canopy, putting pollinator gardens on roofs and in yards, using solar and renewable energy, increasing human-powered transportation), through a pragmatic middle ground where native plants and pollinators may need to be supplemented by technological solutions like artificial pollination drones, to a dystopian future where we loose more of the tree canopy, gardens and have heavy use of transportation and our native pollinators populations crash and we can only rely on artificial pollinators. In such a world, where humans are responsible for mediating pollination, will me really take care of plants which have no benefit to capitalism?

Utopian Future, multimedia, 15" x 15" by Ele Willoughby, 2025

Pollinator Garden, collaged linocut prints by Ele Willoughby, 30” x 22”, 2025.

Pollinator Garden, collaged linocut prints by Ele Willoughby, 30” x 22”, 2025.

Our Fate Is Tied To That Of The Insects, linocut print, 16" x20", Ele Willoughby, 2025

The Milkweed Brings All the Bugs to my Yard, Ele Willoughby, 9.25” x 12.5”,

2023.

Osmia lignaria on Blueberry Flower, Ele Willoughby, 9.25” x 12.5”, 2023.

Black-eyed Susans and Cone Flower, Ele Willoughby, 9.25” x 12.5”, 2023.

Our Fate is Tied to That of the Insects, Food Crops linocut print by Ele

Willoughby, 16” x 20”, 2025.

Cherry Blossoms, Hummingbird Clearwith Moth and Robobee, Ele

Willoughby, 9” x 12”, 2025.

Robobees Don’t Dance. Linocut by Ele Willoughby, 16” x 20”, 2025.

Robbers Don't Dance, Linocut by Ele Willoughby, 16” x 20”, 2025

We're Not Weeds, Linocut by Ele Willoughby, 11" x 14", 2025.

Reproductive Rights for All Plants, Linocut by Ele Willoughby, 11" x 14", 2025.

Don't Let Drones Decide, Linocut by Ele Willoughby, 11" x 14", 2025.

Don't Let Drones Decide, Linocut by Ele Willoughby, 11" x 14", 2025.

Loggerhead Shrike Will Impale But Not Eat Drones, Linocut by Ele Willoughby,

2025. 9" x 12"

Drangonhunters Don't Eat Drones, Linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2025. 8" x 8"

Yellow Garden Spiders Will Catch But Not Eat Drones, Linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2025.

Yellow Garden Spiders Will Catch But Not Eat Drones, Linocut by Ele
Willoughby, 2025.

Dystopian Future, multimedia, 15" x 15" by Ele Willoughby, 2025

My full artist's talk for the Future of Pollination art show for Manufactured Ecosystems is available here:

These Are a Few of Our Favourite Bees

Exhibition
Campbell House Museum
June 22 - July 16, 2022
160 Queen Street W.

Opening event
Campbell House,
Saturday July 2,
2 – 4 p.m.

Artists' Talk & Webcast
The Canadian Music Centre,
20 St. Joseph Street Toronto
Thursday, July 7
7:30 – 9 p.m.
(doors open 7 pm)

Co-presented by Art-Sci Salon & The Canadian Music Centre

These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees investigates wild, native bees and their ecology through playful dioramas, video, audio, relief print and poetry. Inspired by lambe lambe – South American miniature puppet stages for a single viewer – four distinct dioramas convey surreal yet enlightening worlds where bees lounge in cozy environs, animals watch educational films and ethereal sounds animate bowls of berries (having been pollinated by their diverse bee visitors). Displays reminiscent of natural history museums invite close inspection, revealing minutiae of these tiny, diverse animals, our native bees. From thumb-sized to extremely tiny, fuzzy to hairless, black, yellow, red or emerald green, each native bee tells a story while her actions create the fruits of pollination, reflecting the perpetual dance of animals, plants and planet. With a special appearance by Toronto's official bee, the jewelled green sweat bee, Agapostemon virescens!

These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees Collective are:

Sarah Peebles, Ele Willoughby, Rob Cruickshank & Stephen Humphrey

The Works

These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees

Sarah Peebles, Ele Willoughby, Rob Cruickshank & Stephen Humphrey
Single-viewer box theatres, dioramas, sculpture, textile art, macro video, audio transducers, poetry, insect specimens, relief print, objects, electronics, colour-coded DNA barcodes.

Bees represented: rusty-patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis); jewelled green sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens); masked sweat bee (Hylaeus annulatus); leafcutter bee (Megachile relativa)

In the Landscape

Ele Willoughby & Sarah Peebles
paper, relief print, video projection, audio, audio cable, mixed media

View through viewing portal into Ele Willoughby's rusty patched bumblebee lambe lambe box

In the Landscape, multimedia by Ele Willoughby and Sarah Peebles, linocut, painting, video projection, branch, wire, DNA bar codes, sound

Top of Ele Willoughby's rusty patched bumblebee lambe lambe box with view through skylight, paper flowers, twig chair, dandelion stem woven table, hand bound tiny book with linocut bee

Shot of Ele Willoughby's rusty patched bumblebee wooden lambe lambe box on legs, short table with other artifacts and bumblebee specimen

Some photos of my pieces in our art show, These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees, with my diorama like lambe lambe theatre box for a rusty patched bumblebee, and rusty patched bumblebee print along with the In the Landscape multimedia collaboration with Sarah Peebles.

You can watch the webcast of our artist talks here!

Linocut Prints of Various Bee Species

There are literally thousands of different species of bees. I have made a series of hand-printed lino block prints with chine collé Japanese washi papers to illustrate their variety of colours and sheens. I have mainly focused on the biodiversity of local native bees, here in Ontario and contrasted that with the imported European honeybee. While I am a devoted fan of honey, the honeybee is an imported agricultural species, arguably even an invasive species, which can harm native bees by out-competing them and because their presence and trade within North American has introduced bee diseases to the native species so vital for pollinisation.

Eastern Snail Shell Mason Bee, linocut 8" x 8" on Japanese kozo paper, by Ele Willoughby, 2023

Eastern Carpenter Bee, 8" x 8" linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2018

Megachile brevis, linocut by Ele Willoughbby 2017


Rusty-patched Bumble Bee, linocut, Ele Willoughby, 2017

Blue Orchard Mason Bee, 8" x 8" linocut by EleWilloughby, 2012

The Leafcutter Bee (Megachile relativa), 8" x 8" linocut by Ele Willoughby 2012

Agapostemon sericeus, 8" x 8" linocut by Ele Willoughby 2012

Bombus Impatiens, 8" x 8", linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2012

Melissodes, 8" x 8" linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2012

Honey Bee, 8" x 8" linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2012

Bees of Toronto, City of Toronto Biodiversity Series

The 'Bees of Toronto' and the page featuring my bee art

Part of the City of Toronto's ongoing series about biodiversity in the city, the 'Bees of Toronto' includes information about the hundreds of bee species who live here, where and when you can see them and what you can do to help our beleaguered pollinators. It also includes some cultural history of bees in Toronto and features the work of local artists (visual art, sound and poetry) inspired by bees, including my linocut and multimedia bee series.

Multimedia works about Bees and Ecology

This is a series of multimedia works about bees and the bigger picture ecological picture, including things behaviours, the plants they use for food and building supplies, how they nest and their interactions with people and their environment.

Bee Homes is an interactive artwork incorporating electronics, linocut prints including in electrically conductive ink and electrically conductive thread and collage. The story I'm telling with the piece is about how bees live here. We all know the honeybee, with its hexagonal cells in its hives, but it's not native to North America. Most of our native bees live in holes and burrows. They also come in a wide range of colours. So the other collaged, handmade papers, represent how the bees live, from the hexagons with the honey bee at the top in yellows, to the circles in blues and greens at the bottom. In this shot you can also see the spiral speaker printed on the reverse. The print itself acts as speaker when combined with a magnet and connected to an Arduino microprocessor. Each bee itself, printed in electrically conductive ink, is a capacitative sensor. If the viewer waves at a bee, a sound recording is triggered to play, which includes field recordings and my explanation of the identification of the bee and how it nests.

The Bees, multimedia artwork by Ele Willoughby, 2013. This is my earliest interactive bee artwork. Each bee is printed in electrically conductive ink and acts as a capacitative sensor so it can trigger a sound recording and identify itself.

Honeybee Dance, 9.25" x 12.5", linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2016

Solitary Bees Don't Dance, multimedia with linocut 12" x 16", by Ele Willoughby, 2016, contrasts the communication between honeybees, who live together in a hive, via dance, and the more common solitary bee lifestyle of native bees.