The Beekeeper Making Electronic Music With Bees

Everyone’s buzzing about Bioni. He’s a British beekeeper and producer making electronic music incorporating the sounds of bees. You can’t really bring bees into a recording studio, of course. They’d swarm the mic. So Bioni records the insects buzzing in their hives using homemade equipment. He extracts samples from the recordings and data, and processes the sounds through his Hive Synthesizer, which uses honey as an organic electrical resistor. People at music festivals all around the world can dance to Bioni’s beats and learn about colony collapse disorder at the same time. Bees have been dying at an alarming rate, and we need to save these pollinators if agriculture is to survive.

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bees are in trouble they're dying off at alarming rates because of human interference but our planet needs them this man is using the data from B sounds to help raise awareness and he does it using experimental electronic music in my lifetime half the number of bees disappeared I want to draw attention to the plight of bees through their sound I use the name B oniy as an alias it's not my real name welcome to my bee house I started recording bees in my hives about 20 years ago and I always wear this vintage bee suit because I want people to concentrate just on my music all my musics based around the sounds of bees it's the sound of the actual bees inside the hives which I've taken and processed into new sounds and it's also the sound of honey where I pass an electrical current through the Omni biani uses homemade equipment to extract data from the different sounds and frequencies of the bees the queen is a high-pitched sound the workers is a medium pitch sound and the drones are a lower pitch sound I can extract samples from the recordings and put them onto my synthesizer and then play those live as I perform I travel around the world get invited to music festivals which have an interest in ecology as well he hopes that enough people will be moved by his music to consider their impact and bee populations [Music] I think the sounds of bees connect to people it's quite emotional so I thought if people got interested in bees through their sound and the technology and education side they'd also become interested in the eco side as well about saving bees [Music]