Olive • 11 • Dublin

8-11 Category   •  2026
I was inspired to make my piece, Hive of Activity, for the theme ‘This is Nature!’ because of the importance of bees to our environment. Bees are important pollinators for flowers, fruits and vegetables. They transfer pollen between the male and female parts of plants, allowing seeds and fruit to grow. We simply wouldn't be able to survive without them. I wanted to use simple, recycled and natural materials for my artwork. The honeycomb is made from different sized paper tubes (such as toilet and kitchen roll tubes, paper cups etc.) which I painted yellow to represent honey, warmth, and the brightness we associate with bees and their hives. I used macaroni pasta for the smaller honeycomb and drew and coloured the bees on recycled paper. The bees are placed to make it look like they are moving and flying around the hive because bees are always working, collecting pollen, and helping the hive. The artwork is placed on wood which was rescued from a neighbour’s skip! Overall, my artwork represents how something so small can have a huge impact. It also shows teamwork, because bees must work together to achieve goals that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. If we, as humans, keep destroying bee’s habitats - such as woods, trees, green spaces, paving over gardens and using artificial grass, bees will be in serious danger. I learned that If Irish farmers had to manually pollinate their own crops, it would cost them in between €20 million and a whopping €59 million. I think that bees are amazing, and we couldn’t live without them so, the next time you see a bee, don’t shy away from it, (though certainly don’t embrace it!) but thank that one bee for doing what they can, for working together and making flowers flourish and crops grow. If we worked together to stop climate change and other risks to our environment, in the numbers that bees work together the world would be a much better place.