Bee wise

A  couple of days ago I had to work in Manchester and after a day of  sitting most of the time in a windowless little office I was happy to use my legs again and to explor the city. For some reason on the way I came across a lot of bees. Of course not real ones- it's still winter, however images of these marvellous little creatures. The first I discovered on a street bin, a black square container with a bee logo on  all four sides. And then a lot of them. Is it an attempt of the city council to shed light on the current worldwide plight of the bees?  I carried on strolling around. Then I came across bees in shop windows, on posters, engraved in the pavement and also on some stickers on sign posts. I didn't go further with my musing about the bees, however I was a bit puzzled.

I  love bees and bumble bees too and I am quite conscious about the problem we as humans have created for our some hundred million years older species. And I am aware of the urgent need to tackle this problem: ban pesticides and enable more real natural, wild habitats in our industrialized world. I walked for a while until my feet felt a bit  sore and I was heading to a pub for a drink and some good live music. I have seen it already before, but this time I came from an other  direction and just some buildings ahead I bumped into my bee of the day, a nice piece of street art. It was part of a bigger graffiti beautifully crafted on a temporary building site gate. What a strange  impression, the dark street, the fence of the building site and behind  like a missing tooth in a nice set of nice teeth the empty space of the former house. And above a near full moon struggling to get its light through the clouds to bring some power to the colours of the mural.
I  had no camera with me this evening and had to come back the other day. Than the scenery had quite changed. The  gate was open, builders  were buzzing around and a car blocked my view of the whole painting. At least I managed to close the gate. I noticed the name of the artist: bubek and finally took a picture.
Later I found out, that Manchester in the last ten years got a lot of great street art in the city. And the bees? Only my preoccupation? Not at all. Here seemingly two things come together. 

First during the Industrial Revolution, Manchester being in the lead of  industrial mass production adopted the worker bee as a motif for its city. Seven bees are included in the crest of the city’s arms which were  granted to the Borough of Manchester in 1842. During this era  Manchester was like a hive full of industrious live. Now bees can be seen around the city in the streets, the town hall and on other buildings and structures. But the recent awareness about bees also contributes to the increasing appearance in the city.
And indeed nowadays bees in urban environment do much better than in the open countryside with its poisoned industrialized fields. It has become quite fashion to have hives on rooftops of inner city buildings and industrial parks too. There are also a lot of small scale beekeeper looking after their sweet friends.

Paintings like that of bubek, whoever he or she might be will help to spread the word.