Kew Garden set to bee a permanent home for popular sculpture The Hive

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Daniel O'Mahoney24 April 2018

A sculpture celebrating the beauty of bees is set to become a permanent fixture at Kew Gardens after it proved to be hugely popular with visitors.

The Hive, by award-winning English artist Wolfgang Buttress, is made of thousands of aluminium pieces in the shape of a honeycomb. Visitors hear a honeybee chorus as the 17m structure becomes a pulsating light display.

It was installed at the Royal Botanic Gardens as a temporary exhibition in 2016 after being designed for the UK Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo.

Now Kew has applied to give The Hive a permanent home at the Unesco world heritage site.

In a report for Kew, the conservation architecture practice Donald Insall Associates wrote: “During the last two years the sculpture has proved consistently popular with visitors.

“Both children and adults alike have enjoyed exploring the structure and interacting with the lights and sounds.”

The application is currently out for public consultation.

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