Sara Mapelli: The Performance Artist Who Wears 12,000 Honey Bees

Sara Mapelli: The Performance Artist Who Wears 12,000 Honey Bees

Are you the type of person who bolts if a bee comes within buzzing distance of you? If yes, this is literally your worst nightmare.

Meet Sara Mapelli, the performance artist who "wears" 12,000 honey bees and then dances as part of her act.

The 54-year-old from Oregon covers her body in pheromones to attract the insects and then performs covered in the creatures for up to two hours.

She calls the finished article - when her whole torso is covered - her "bee blouse". Yep, it's continually being proved to us truth is always stranger than fiction...

In case you were wondering it's not a pain-free process - Mapelli admits to being stung hundreds of times while wearing said live blouse. On her website, the self-appointed Bee Queen explains: "These 12,000 bees push with their powerful wings from each side of my body, I resist and then I let go and flow and move with them.

"It is a deep meditation and I feel the hive mind surround me, hold me, and expand my body on a cellular level. I am a healer, dancer, artist, builder of structures and bee keeper."

She adds: "As bee keepers, my partner, Theodore and I hope to help the bees of the northwest by encouraging them to swarm and become hardy in the ever-changing environment."

Kind of takes bee-keeping to a new level, no?

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