'Bioni Samp' has discovered a unique way to inspire the public with love for pollinator populations. Now his name is starting to get out there and many people think he is ‘the bee’s knees’ for his original approach to raising awareness about the imperiled bees.
His electronica music touches people emotionally as he educates them about dwindling honeybee populations. He hopes that his music helps young people to stop and think about the impact of their decisions on struggling pollinators.
This mysterious British beekeeper has been a London-based musician and beekeeper for 20 years. His innovative mind led him to use home equipment to research and record sounds from his honeybee hives. He extracts samples from the recordings, then processes and mixes the sounds through his hive synthesizer. He uses honey as an organic electrical resistor. The result is experimental music that is entirely the product of his bees.
This short video about Bioni is brought to us by Great Big Story and is just 2:43-minutes long:
During Bioni's lifetime, half the bee population has disappeared. This beekeeper-musician only identifies himself with the alias ‘Bioni’ even though he has played bee music around the world. He keeps his face hidden within a vintage beekeeper’s suit because he wants people to concentrate only on the music, which is by and for bees.
He processes the actual sounds of bees in their hives. The queen bee has a high-pitched sound, the worker bees have a medium pitch, and the drones make lower-pitched sounds. Then he collects samples using his household equipment to extract the different sounds and frequencies of the bees, putting these into his synthesizer to use. He even passes an electrical current through honey.
He travels the world making bee music and raising awareness and attends ecology-oriented music festivals where his message is well-received by the audience as they dance and flow with the music. They are interested in his music and the plight of bees, as they learn about monocultures, colony collapse disorder and other bee problems.
Since bee music connects with the heart in quite an emotional way, he hopes it opens people up to connect more deeply with bees and develop an interest in saving them.
Bioni hopes that his music will help young people to take the situation surrounding the struggling pollinators more seriously. His social media presence is a tribute to his success and the fact that people are enjoying the sounds of the electronic honeybee music. You can find his un-bee-lievable tunes on YouTube, Spotify and Bandcamp.
We commend Bioni for his clever approach to seeking new ways to look out for the bees he loves. Music unites people and this is the most worthy of causes, as bees continue to die at an alarming rate, and humanity needs these beloved pollinators to keep our agriculture healthy for all.