A bee tattoo can come in many different designs and it can have a whole host of meanings. You might see someone with a realistic looking honeybee on their arm, or you could see a cartoonish bee in some kind of fantasy land.
Regardless of the design, bee tattoos hold different meanings for different people. Below you will find just some of the most popular bee tattoo meanings and some of the ways that you can get these tattoos designed.
If someone is or wants to be a loyal person, they might just get a bee tattoo. That is because loyalty is one of the bee’s best qualities. No matter what they go through throughout the day, they will always try to return to the hive to help out their fellow bees. All of that hard work that they put in every day is solely to help the flock, which pretty much the definition of loyalty.
For the same reason, the bee tattoo can be used to symbolize love. A bee’s dedication to its fellow bees is pretty much unmatched. People who get the bee tattoo might want to show that they have strong love in their lives, or they could get it to show that they are loving people. The message might not come across strongly enough with just a bee tattoo, though, so they might incorporate other designs to make the message clearer.
Believe it or not, bees are not out to get you, but they will sacrifice themselves in order to protect their hives. They will also do anything to protect their queen, so expect at least one of them to come after you if you try to mess with the queen of their hives. That’s why bee tattoos are great designs to get when you want to get a symbol that represents protection on your body.
Bees are also seen as one of the most soulful insects in existence because they always know where their homes are. Regardless of where they are working or how many times, they have been thrown off track, at the end of the day they will always make it back to their hives. That has a deep meaning for some people and they want to express their desire to be that soulful with their bee tattoos.
Thanks to their hives being used during ancient wars, bees have also become a symbol of destruction and chaos for some people. This can be a very negative meaning for some, but more often than not it is simply someone saying that they recognize that life is chaos and they are built to deal with it.
The beehive or just a set of bees in the design can be a great way to show this. If you do use this meaning, you might want to include other symbols of chaos and destruction in your tattoo or you can just make the bees themselves look aggressive and chaotic.
Those who are looking for a cool and unique way to symbolize family might find the bee tattoo to be an excellent choice. Remember that bees are very family oriented and loyal, so there really aren’t too many better symbols of family out there. Obviously this is even a better tattoo for people who already like bees, but plenty of people who never cared about bees end up getting one of these simply to use this bee tattoo meaning.
You can even take the design a step further to emphasize this meaning by putting the initials or full names of family members above the bees. If you are already planning on getting a tattoo to honor your family, then you can easily add in some bees if you were looking for some additional images or symbols.
Similarly, the bee can also represent duty since they spend their entire lives making sure that their families and fellow bees can survive. If you are the type of person who sees your job and the work you do at home as the most important things in life, then this might be a perfect bee tattoo meaning for you. Duty can also be a good meaning for someone who is in the military as that is considered one of the most important traits of a military man or woman.
Yet another great bee tattoo meaning is intelligence since these guys create one of the most perfectly designed nests in nature, the honeycomb. What’s great about the honeycomb design is that it just looks intelligently made, so all you really have to do to use this meaning is include a honeycomb and maybe a couple of bees. This is a great meaning for anyone who is intelligent or who is working hard to develop their intelligence.
A rarer bee tattoo meaning is fertility. Considering that they spend a lot of their time fertilizing flowers around their hives, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that some people, especially women, get the bee tattoo. In most of these cases, they use the tattoo as an extra form of hope of one day starting a family. Of course, it could also mean that the owner has a large family and takes a lot of pride in the fact that they were able to conceive so many times.
A more obvious bee tattoo meaning has to do with honey that the bees produce. The honey that honeybees produce is very sweet, so some people might get the bee tattoo to show that they themselves are sweet. Obviously, this would be a more popular bee tattoo meaning for women, but hey, there are sweet guys out there too! This is one meaning that might not be clear to everyone who sees your bee tattoo, so you might want to add in some additional images to make the meaning clearer.
What’s great about most of these bee tattoo meanings is that you can attach them to any type of bee tattoo design that you want. That might not seem like a big deal, but the creative freedom that gives you opens up a world of possibilities as far as design goes. You are free to choose a large or small design and use any of these meanings that you want. With so many other tattoo ideas, you have to stick with a limited amount of design styles, which can make the process a bit tougher on people.
Having said all of that, you can make your bee tattoo meaning a bit clearer by making little tweaks to your design. As we pointed out in the example above, you can easily show that you are representing family by including different family members’ initials or names in the design. Another good idea is to find other images that also symbolize the meanings that you are planning on using and you’ll probably find one or two that can look great with the bee tattoo.
Something else that you’ll want to think about is where you want to place your bee tat. If you are getting a very personal bee tattoo, you might not want to put it on a visible part of your body. If, on the other hand, you want to show how much pride you have in whatever the bee tat represents, then you might want to get it on your forearm, wrist, or maybe even your neck.
Some people like to choose the location before they even start the design process, while others will come up with the tattoo that they want and then make it fit wherever they want to place it on their bodies. If you are having a bit of a tough time figuring out where to place your bee tattoo, be sure to ask your tattoo artist and chances are they will help you out.
If you have a bee tattoo meaning or two in mind, you should tell your tattoo artist what they are before they start to work on your design. The reason why this is a good idea is because you want the artist on the same page as you. Once they know the meanings that are attached to the image they’re looking at, they might be able to give you a few tips on how to make it even better. This also has the added bonus effect of making the artist care more about the tattoo that they are making.
Hopefully you now have a better idea of why these tattoos are so popular and maybe picked up a bee tattoo meaning or two that works for you. With all of these meanings in mind, it’s really not surprising at all that so many people are drawn to bee tattoos, and chances are they will only grow more in popularity.
If you decide that one or more of these bee tattoo meanings work for you and you have thought up a design that would work perfectly on your skin, be sure to find a top artist in your area to up your chances of getting exactly what you want.