You may have noticed two different background illustrations on many of our product's packaging. We use a honeycomb and bee background and a honeybee and apple blossom background. These are published illustrations by the late Su Zan Noguchi Swain, a Japanese-American scientific artist whose paintings and drawings appear in some 40 books, field guides, magazines, and encyclopedia.

The illustrations used on Appalachian Bee's product packaging are published in the 1967 Random House book entitled "All Kinds of Bees" and are used with permission from her two sons. Su Zan was born on a farm in Iliff, Colorado in 1916 and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado in 1938.  Her first illustrated book was "The Insect Guide" published by Doubleday in 1948 and co-authored by her entomologist husband, the late Dr. Ralph B. Swain, PhD. Su Zan passed away peacefully at the age of 93 in Sioux City, Iowa in January 2010. She is survived by her two sons, Tom Swain, PhD. of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, and Ralph Swain, MA, of Coolidge, Arizona.