Half-dozen origami bees

With some frequency I visit a quaint rural grocery store here in Vermont called locally “The Wayside.” This charming country store is four miles from my house. Inside among the aisles you can find everything from salt and pepper to fishing rods.

A few days ago, Nancy Tschorn, the owner and a friend of mine, asked if I could fold half dozen origami bee that she could give as a Christmas gift to her twelve-year-old grandson, who also happens to be a beekeeper.

My challenge was that the only origami bees I had seen were complex Robert-Lang types. Even if I could locate diagrams, making one of his models would take me an eternity, and half a dozen, even longer.

Fortunately, I had recently been folding a fly created by Angel Encija. With masterful simplicity, this fly takes advantage of the white of one side of a piece of paper, and black on the other. Diagrams for Angel’s fly may be found in  El libro de pajaritas (Grupo Riglos) ISBN 84-206-5563-5.

Perhaps, I thought, the fly could become a bee!

So, I took a piece of paper –one side yellow and the other white, and repeatedly folded and studied this model. With a black marker I created lined graphic patterns on certain sections of the yellow side, refolded, and blunted the wings. This gave the model just enough of a touch to make a bee from a fly. At a recent origami group meeting, one young member, Aidan Mayer, suggested adding a couple of folds to either side of the head evoking the prominent eyes of a bee. What a master-stroke that was!

I ended up folding eight of these bees for Nancy. In return she gave me a thousand thank you’s, just as many smiles, and a few dollars to buy a nice jar of local honey. I’m now folding so many of these origami bees, I’ll have enough to fill a beehive!