Honey Talks – Comics inpired by painted beehive panels

Honey Talks is a collection of comics inspired by a form of Slovene folk art, namely painted beehive panels.

February 2006
box of 9 booklets, 256 pages of comics plus an introductory text

The most recent edition of Stripburger combines things seemingly uncombinable. Honey Talks is a collection of comics inspired by a form of Slovene folk art, namely painted beehive panels. Painted beehive panels are a specialty of Slovene folklore. Even though the oldest panel is dated 1758, most of them were created between 1820’s and 1880’s, and tradition was practiced till the beginning of WW II. They can be found on the so-called “lying beehives” which were then stacked one onto another and roofed to form a bee-house. For us, the removable boards in the front are of crucial importance. An average board of this kind was 20 to 30 cm wide and 10 to 20 cm high. The lower side had a narrow rectangular opening often referred to as “the gullet”, through which bees entered the hive. (Our booklets’ dimensions are faithful to the original format.) Beehive panels were painted, so the bees could recognize their hive. Farmers soon grew tired of monotonously colored panels and decided to decorate their apiaries with various images. Reasons for the start of this tradition are similar to those for painting the furniture and buildings, other practical reasons, superstition and piety expressed by some of the motifs.