The Hive looks fantastic. The MN Landscape Arboretum hosts visiting sculpture displays and big interactive displays every year including a seven foot hive this year. They also have a permanent sculpture garden on a hilltop covering three acres. The Tashjian Bee and Pollinator Discovery Center for community outreach and education opened this year.

i wonder if The Hive is a traveling display or if the sculptor has other smaller hives for traveling.

Wolfgang Buttress Hive interview

I go to Kew Gardens quite a lot and have seen the Hive. It's a beautiful structure and the concept is great but it is probably something best experienced on an overcast day with only few people there. The couple of times I've been to see it, I could hardly see the LEDs because it was too bright and couldn't hear much of the sound due to screaming children.
It seems to be extremely popular. Even when the rest of Kew Gardens is fairly empty, there's always a lot of people in and around the Hive.

mmm. not really selling it to me (screamy children especially), Hoverfly. In truth, my absolute favourite bit of Kew has little to do with plants - it is a modest, but for me, utterly beautiful building - The Japanese Minka house.

Not really selling it to myself, either. I tend to avoid crowds and seek out the quieter corners of Kew Gardens. The Hive will be there for a while so hopefully I'll get the chance to check it out at a quieter time.

You're right about the Minka house. It is beautiful!

When does school start in the fall? Visiting after school starts should cut down on the screaming kids problem :-) The bees should be active enough in early fall to keep the sound and light function fairly interesting I'd think.... I wonder how the sound is broadcast? If it is low frequency and the speakers are touching the structure, the structure is probably vibrating as part of the 'hum'. If so, touching the structure should allow you to feel the hum even if there are people/kids making noise - i.e. 'listen' with your body rather than your ears! I'd be interested to know whether you can feel the sound of the bees.....

I'm not sure when school will start again but it'll definitely be a lot less busy then so early fall will probably be a good time.

Touching the structure is a good idea and I'll definitely try it. There are also some kind of bee-vibration stations underneath where you're supposed to feel bee signals through a wooden stick but I didn't really take the time to work out how to do that.

I was just reading about this online, probably because the Cultural Landscape Foundation posted something about it. It sounds really really cool.

I have not been so lucky as to visit Kew (I would so love to!) but if it's anything like US attractions, school time can be tricky because of school groups arriving en masse. (My family's museum strategy during the school year is to avoid weekday mornings when school groups usually tour - weekday afternoons are much safer.)

WOW , amazing. 170,000 pieces of aluminum. What a feat of assembling says the builder in me.

Geodesic domes, Buckminster Fuller says the builder in me! Had a mighty craving for one of these...and now, the welder son can repay the investment in his (extended) upbringing.

Camp, Maybe that is where I heard it. I once went to Bucky's house in Maine when I was in Highschool. A teacher knew him and took us.

I went back to the Hive early this morning and luckily there were only two other people there. I'm a lot more impressed with it now that I had a chance to experience the sounds properly.
There is a kind of constant low base hum, that you can just about feel by touching the structure but not very clearly. The rest of the sounds seem to depend a lot more on the actual activity of the bees. At one point it sounded like organ music, at another point it was more like wind chimes. For a lot of the time it was only the low hum.
I suppose it doesn't sound that impressive but standing in the actual structure and being surrounded by the strange bee-music is quite an experience.

The lights were still a little hard to see, though. It was a sunny morning.

hoverfly - that sounds more like I imagined it would from the article I read! I wonder if the sound can be turned up to enhance the experience when there are more people there at the same time? Perhaps increasing the volume would distort the effect though. It sounds like The Hive is a place you'd have to visit more than once to get the full experience by visiting at different times of day and in different weather conditions. Probably the people who are going to experience it best is the Kew staff working in that area who can visit it every day....! For the lights, I wonder if very late afternoon will become the best time to see the lights as daylength shortens. Since both sound and light effects depend on the bees' activity though I wonder what times of day they are most active....? I guess that's what you could learn by regular visits! Or Camp.'s daughter could probably tell us! :-)