Bee Dances, 2001-Present Sarah Mapelli (aka BeeQueen) USA
It’s sensual. At the same time, you know there’s this fierceness - Mapelli in an interview with National Geographic
Sarah Mapelli is an artist, healer, helper, bee dancer and builder. In 2001 she contacted entomologist Michael Burgett [of Oregon State University] for help realizing a vision of dancing while covered in bees. He provided her with a pheromone mix of “ the scent of 1,000 queens” which caused a swarming hive of bees to latch on to her. In later performances, she switches to wearing a hives queen around her neck in a small cage (or “spaceship” as she likes to call them).
Her first dance lasted 2 hours and took the form of a photoshoot. Mapelli’s dancing is fantastically fluid, a meditation guided by bees. She listens to the bees need for warmth, moving slowly and carefully as not to aggravate them. Mapelli and 12,000 bees dance in a fierce and intimate duet. But even though the experience was loud and slightly painful, she’s been dancing with bees ever since. She’s received a moderate amount of media coverage and is featured in the film Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us?
Many of her performances focus on healing - the audience sits in two circles, an inner one and outer one while Mapelli dances, moving from person to person. Some - especially those on her youtube channel - feature others in an improvisational and collaborative dance. Mapelli views her dances as always collaborative: it’s her and the bees dancing together - with the bees leading. She hopes that by dancing in unison with so many bees that she can show others that bees aren’t something to be afraid of.
In an interview with BellaMia magazine in 2016, Mapelli is quoted as saying “I don't want to personify the bee world. I want to help bee-ify the person world.” The notion of learning from bees runs deep in Mapellis work and she often focuses on human communities in her writings. Moreover, her architecture practices is very inspired by bee hive construction.
we have self-pollination cross-pollination wind-pollination. It’s not enough at the rate in which we trade habitat for the habit of economic growth to debate Each one of us is hypocrite the monster is so big we are tumbling down. so help the pollinators grab some higher ground
Each one of us pollinates as we move amongst each other. In conversation, communication, In contact we embrace constantly transversing, transferring, motion and magnetism feet on the surface electric below Earth's terrestrial ecosystem will continue to grow
- Excerpted from the artist’s blog
Mapelli’s work is also staunchly anti-capitalist and pushes against the destruction of natural bee habitats for profit. She calls for more collaborative and communal living spaces and employment. You can read more here on her website.
I was initially introduced to Sarah Mapelli through @inthenow on tiktok. You can buy merch from Mapelli here, on her Zazzle Store.














