This coin is the first on the series “Animal Architects" and features a painted honey bee atop a flower, collecting nectar for its colony. Mintage is limited to 10,000 coins. As a pure silver coin, this item is GST / HST exempt.

The Design:

Designed by Canadian artist Yves Bérubé and features a painted honey bee standing atop a flower blossom, its head bowed to collect precious nectar that will sustain its colony. The design is layered over an embossed honeycomb of perfectly symmetrical hexagons, which cover the entire polished silver field of the coin’s reverse. The reverse also features the word “CANADA,” the date “2013,” and the face value of “3 DOLLARS.”

The beehive, home to and engineering feat of the honey bee, is built around an iconic structure: the honeycomb. This amazing architecture is a mathematically perfect matrix of hexagons, optimizing spatial coverage while minimizing the amount of construction material required for building—an achievement of engineering efficiency that is virtually unmatched.