Seeing some spring flowers peaking out from the cold Wisconsin soil reminded me of a type of folk art I learned about a long time ago. The painted panels of Slovenian beehives. Like many areas of folk art has done in the past 25 years, much academic work, museum exhibitions and the internet have made these pieces much more accessible. When you look at these you will see they all have small cut-outs at the center bottom. That is where the bees fly in.
Here are a couple photos from (Courtesy Jennifer Dorroh). This is what the hives look like when they are intact and being used to produce honey. What a great folk art installation they make.
Here are a couple of my favorites from the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum
The travel site View From the Pier takes us on a tour of a small beekeeping museum in the next section of this post.
