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Joyce Bee (fl.1960s-1980s) Joyce Bee is an artist best known for her educational poster work. During the 1970s and 1980s she produced a range of detailed and informative posters on a range of British natural history themes. She has also contributed illustrations of insects for a number of books including The Oxford Book of Insects by John Burton (1968). During the 1960s she was commissioned to draw a series of watercolours for use in a new insect gallery at the Natural History Museum.
In 1969, Joyce Bee was commissioned by the Natural History Museum to produce a large watercolour drawing of Colorado beetles. The aim of the watercolour was to illustrate the various stages in the life cycle of this pest species. The drawing was intended to be educational; enabling the public to correctly identify the beetle and to avoid possible confusion with the harmless ladybird or burying beetles. The drawing shows the Colorado beetle in both its larval and adult stages on a potato plant. In real life, adult beetles are approximately 10mm long but the three shown in this drawing have been greatly magnified. The adults have distinctive black and yellow stripes on the wing cases. Four larvae have also been drawn showing their distinctive orange coloration. The larvae are initially orange-brown in colour, but later become an orange-red colour with two rows of black dots on each side. The leaves of the potato plant show typical signs of damage from this beetle.
The Colorado beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata) is a serious pest of potatoes because both the adult beetles and the larvae eat the foliage of the plants, which reduces the yield of the tubers. The Colorado beetle was first recorded as a pest in the USA in 1859, but in 1877 it was found at the Liverpool docks in a ship carrying wheat from Texas. This resulted in the Destructive Insects Pests Act of 1877 being introduced in an attempt to control major insect pests in Great Britain. Between 1941 and 1952, 137 breeding colonies of the Colorado beetle were found in Britain, and each colony was successfully destroyed. The life cycle of the Colorado beetle starts in the spring when the adult beetle begins to search for a suitable potato plant. When a plant is found, the adult quickly starts to eat the leaves. The female then lays up to 4,000 eggs on the underside of the leaf. The larvae hatch after 6 to 8 days and then feed on the plant until they are ready to burrow into the soil and then pupate. In July or August the adults emerge, and if the weather is warm enough another generation can be produced before the potato plant dies off in the autumn.
The Joyce Bee Drawings Collection This drawing is the only example of original artwork by Joyce Bee held by the Natural History Museum.
Exhibition and publication details Initially intended for public display in the Museum, the drawing was unfortunately never used for exhibition purposes.
References and further reading Burton, John (1968) The Oxford Book of Insects. Oxford University Press: London. 208pp. Chittenden, Frank H. (1907) The Colorado Potato Beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata, Say). Bulletin of the United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Entomology, No. 87. 15pp. Gratwick, M. (ed.) (1992) Crop Pests in the UK. Chapman
& Hall: London. 490pp. |
