Long a motif for the house of Chaumet’s Bee My Love collection, the honeycomb symbolises eternity and vitality — so who better to model it than the indefatigable Emily Lam-Ho?

Save the honeybees!” has become something of a rallying cry these days. It’s pleaded with the same breath we reserve for diatribes about climate change; about plastic straws; about five-minute showers. But here’s the kicker: honeybees are actually doing perfectly fine. They’re a domesticated species far from extinction, herded along by keepers not unlike those of cows, pigs or even the errant llama. It’s the other taxonomically categorised subspecies that deserve our undivided attention (and, if you’re so inclined, your GoFundMe efforts). Because, as it turns out, honeybees? Big slackers. When it comes down to it, honeybees just have excellent PR; it’s the native bees and specialist pollinators – honeybees are generalists physically too small to pollinate tomatoes, a job bumble bees do with ease – that do most of the heavy lifting.

But there’s one thing honeybees do that the other bees can’t and, if some do attempt, do so poorly. Yes, honeybees are named for their extraordinary efforts at honey production and the honeycomb structures that inspired Charles Darwin, who once claimed the hexagonal cells as “absolutely perfect in economising labour and wax”. They also serve as a six-sided inspiration to Chaumet’s genesis, with its Napoleonic linkages, as well as the maison‘s Bee My Love collection, as modelled on our Women of Power laureate (and undeterred champion of all things sustainability), Emily Lam-Ho.

Bee My Love’s honeycomb motif — some punctuated with specialised taille impératrice (empress-cut) diamonds faceted with an auspicious 88 cuts to maximise the sparkle factor; others simply high-shine from mirror-polished gold and rose gold — is said to symbolise eternity and vitality. To Lam-Ho, who co-hosted an event constructing bee hotels with Chaumet and her 8Shades platform, it’s about resilience; about sustainability. About future-forward thinking for generations well beyond our own. And if it buzzes past as jewellery inspired by the very critters that give us honey, give us fruit, give us food that sustain life itself? So bee it.

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