Eggs, Leaves and Eyes of Bees

Not a new spell or love potion, but the things that have been grabbing my attention over the last few days, and which have encouraged me to start doodling in a sketchbook/notebook again...

The eggs are fairly obvious and are a recurring theme in my work, along with pebbles. I've been working on a piece for a long time now called "baby blanket' which is about fertility and motherhood, and another called 'Design A Baby' which is about genetics and eugenics. 

The leaves have become a bit of an obsession (that's not like me!) and I'm looking into the cost involved in getting some screens made of some of my images,  but what about the eyes of bees?

Bees apparently have 5 eyes. The two big ones, which are compound eyes, and then three little ones in the top of their heads, called 'ocelli'. These are simple eyes, meaning they have one single lens (like ours) and they are designed to recognise light and dark, so helping the bees to navigate into and out of the hive.

I saw a microscope slide preparation from the 1860's of the ocelli of a hive bee: it was for sale on eBay. The pattern of the preparation could easily have inspired a 1950's fabric designer . . .  

During the slide preparation the ocelli themselves are destroyed to leave the three holes in the epidermis. The pointy end of the triangle would have been towards the front of the head. I was really sad not to be the highest bidder for this microscope slide, but it was obviously quite sought after.