Bees in Jewellery

There are probably few of us who don't like a piece of jewellery: some of course like more of it than others. And jewellery has been part of the lives of humans since we first began walking on this planet. At first humans adorned themselves with feathers, stones, shells, bones.

The earliest piece of jewellery found to date is a necklace made of fishbones, found in a cave in Monaco and thought to have been made about 25,000 years ago. (gemsociety.org)

As Caroline and I have been describing over the past few days, bees have held a significant part in human lives for eons. Therefore it is to be expected that their likeness was made into jewellery.

My search for ancient Bee Jewellery revealed a most beautiful piece called The Honeybees Pendant which was discovered in the Necropolis of the Minoan Palace of Malia on the island of Crete, and is thought to date to c.1800 BC. (itsallgreeklondon.wordpress.com)

(itsallgreeklondon.wordpress.com)

And then I found this exquisite Greek Bee Fibula (brooch) dated 4th century BC.

(archaicwonder.tumblr.com/)

The bee, found in the artifacts of Ancient Near East and Aegean cultures, was believed to be the sacred insect that bridged the natural world to the underworld.

Potnia, the Minoan-Mycenaean “mistress” goddess, was referred to as “The Pure Mother Bee”. Her priestesses received the name of “Melissa” (“bee”). It is interesting to note that Mycenaean tholos tombs were shaped like beehives.

In another myth, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo’s gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee maidens, usually identified with the Thriae. The Thriae was a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean bee goddesses.

(Source: tmora.org in https://archaicwonder.tumblr.com/ )

Zoom ahead a thousand years or so and we come to the Victorian era and I found a plethora of bee brooches to choose from. So I must conclude that the Victorian's really liked bees! Here are some for you to choose from.

And is there are place for Bees in Modern Jewellery? Oh definitely yes. Here are some examples of what you can wear this year.

Perhaps you fancy stepping out in a couple of bee brooches. The ones below are made of colored copper and silver wire by Vassiliki Mikropoulou.

Modern contemporary art jewelry and sculpture. Unusual jewelry. Unique, handmade, wire sculpture, colorful jewelry. vmikro Vassiliki Mikropoulou (http://vmikro.blogspot.com)

Or perhaps you fancy a bee ring. There is a ring to suit every fashion statement you might want to make.

Bee earrings come in thousands of styles. The Cartier Diamond bees on the bottom row left, will set you back about $6500A if you were thinking of buying them. The ones on the bottom right you can have for $40A which is cloer to my budget.

And of course you can have bee pendants, bracelets, hairclips.

But the winner is this Swarovski Crystal Glitz Bumble Bee Brooch.

(pinterest.com)

And if you need somewhere to place your jewellery ( including your Cartier earrings) there is nothing better than a honey comb jewellery dish.

(sassandbelle.co.uk)

Tomorrow we are going to take you up close to a bee or two so that you can see how remarkable bees are and what an incredible creator Mother Nature is.