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These images document the earliest performances of <i>The Bees</i> in 2014. At this stage there were a maximum of six hives in the installation. While they appeared identical from the outside, the stands were ad hoc and had not yet been standardised, which made the installation less visually unified. Early performances recorded audience numbers of up to 700 people per hour, with a maximum of approximately 2,100 during the course of a single installation.These early iterations were central to understanding how the installation functioned within festival settings and provided the data for an evaluation that informed subsequent developments and improvements.<b>Findings</b>The hives needed to be more robust.A unifying principle emerged from the experiments: something happens quickly; the concept is grasped within seconds; deeper inspection reveals layers of meaning over time; the experience is multi-sensory and largely self-regulatory; audiences derive pleasure both from the internal scenes and from watching the reactions of others; the experience is fundamentally collective.Audiences relate to installations within festivals in varied and complex ways.Context changes meaning. Differences between day and night, proximity and dispersal, urban and greenfield environments, and busy and quiet conditions all affect audience behaviour and interpretation.Conversations with audiences quickly revealed repeated themes, including questions about purpose, authenticity and authorship, alongside expressions of enjoyment and curiosity.Festivals recognised the value of the installation to their programmes in terms of duration, visibility, flexibility, novelty and its capacity to attract sustained audience engagement.To request accessible descriptions of the images, please contact the Research Data Manager (rdm@edgehill.ac.uk).