Sundarshan Shaw
Apis dorsata
The Most Dangerous Animal In The Jungle
Original Digital Art 2025
Sudarshan Shaw is an Indian artist, visual designer and creator of an art style he calls ‘Folk Indica’. Martin Kunz of Diversity Honeys became aware of Sudarshan’s work in a webinar on efforts to protect tigers in a nature reserve in the central India. The region is also the backdrop for Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. Kipling called Apis dorsata the ‘most dangerous animal in the jungle’. That gave Kunz the idea to commission a work of art that put Apis dorsata into the centre.
Diversity Honeys co-operates with an Indian non governmental organization that works to make honey ‘hunting’ (or ‘collecting’) from A. dorsata colonies sustainable and less dangerous by providing training and protective clothing. Traditionally A. dorsata honey was collected at night when the bees are less aggressive. Better protective clothing enables the collectors to climb the high trees during daylight hours. In training collectors also learn to cut only the part of the comb in which the honey is stored. The bees can then rebuild the comb and replenish their honey stores up to three times in a season. The A. dorsata honey gatherers are members of indigenous tribal communities and among the most disadvantaged groups in India.
Diversity Honeys supports conservation efforts, promotes pollinator diversity, and tries to help support disadvantaged communities by selling these unique honeys in Germany.
In his book ‘Das Lied vom Honig. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Biene’ (The Song of Honey. A Cultural History of the Bee’), the author Ralph Duttli dives into the long history of coexistence between humans and bees. In addition to references to the eras of the ‘old Greeks and Romans’, the book contains a chapter called ‚Indisches Intermezzo: Mögen unsere Kühe Honig geben’ (‘Intermezzo in India’ – may our cows produce honey’). He describes, how the Hindu God Kama ‘shoots arrows from a bow, just like the Greek God Eros’, but that Kama’s bowstring is formed by living bees. And despite this being a history of the bee, Duttli seems to be unaware that the bees described in Hindu mythology are not of the species Apis mellifera …
We have asked the Indian artist, Professor Yunus Khimani, to combine in one picture God Kama (the god of love) and Bhramari Devi (the Goddess of Bees). The bowstring is formed by bees, the bow itself is made of sugar cane – another traditional element.
We feel that this is a far happier life affirming depiction when compared to Christian imagery of patron saints of bees (in particular Saint Ambrose and Saint Bernard).
