After stillbirth, beekeeper again poses with swarm of honey bees for maternity photos

Ohio beekeeper Emily Mueller found quick fame last year when she posed for maternity photos with 20,000 bees swarming her pregnant belly. But the buzz was silenced when the baby boy was stillborn in November.

Mueller, 34, is pregnant again and has reprised the swarming-bees theme for a new set of maternity photos made public on Thursday.

This time, about 16,000 bees swarm about her head and chest, creating the dramatic effect of a living headpiece. She told People that the queen bee was affixed to a cap on her head, attracting the swarm to settle there.

Gold body paint makes her skin glow.

Someone called her “Bee-opatra,” she told People.

Mueller “wanted to represent the amazing miracle of how a woman’s body is so amazing and we’re all a goddess being able to give birth,” she said, People reported. “In my mind, I wanted to be a symbolic queen bee.”

Mueller worked again with her friend, professional photographer Kendrah Damis, a newcomer to the world of bees who told the Akron Beacon Journal she put her faith in her friend’s expertise in handling bees when they created the photos that went viral last year.

Mueller and her husband, Ryan, own Mueller Honey Bee Rescue. The mom-to-be, known in Akron as the “Bee Whisperer,” also made news last year when “she removed a swarm of bees from the Summa Health System campus wearing flip flops and no gloves, moving the 25,000 to 40,000 bees to safety,” writes Cleveland.com.

Damis posted the new maternity photos on her Facebook page. In other photos, Mueller poses with a huge yellow snaked curled around her head and resting on her belly, and with bird gently resting on her hand in another.

“The strength Emily portrays as a Mother is admirable to say the least,” Damis wrote. “When she mentioned wanting to exhibit that strength by turning herself into a goddess for her maternity shoot I wanted to make that vision come to life. Her ideas are unique just as she is, and that is one of the reasons I love her so!”

The mother of three found out she was pregnant again in February. She told People the new photos honor the memory of her son, who she wrote was “born an angel”when she shared news of his death on Facebook last year. They named him Emersyn Jacob..