In 1992, Blind Melon released their most successful single ever, ‘No Rain’, pushing their self-titled debut album to Number Three on the US Billboard chart. That album’s artwork featured a photo of drummer Glenn Graham’s sister in a bee outfit, aged 10; for the video for ‘No Rain’, they sought a similar-looking girl to star, wearing a bee outfit, and the girl that was cast was Heather DeLoach. In the once ubiquitous clip, which you may remember very well indeed, she plays a glasses-wearing child who tap-dances in a bee outfit and later runs off to find her bee kin. She played the same character in the video for Weird Al Yankovic’s ‘Bedrock Anthem’. You can see her in both those clips below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh2RnfGuFW8
It’s been almost 24 years since that was released, and DeLoach is all grown up these days. Now aged 33, she has her own Facebook page – Heather DeLoach, “The Bee Girl” – and still dresses up as a bee occasionally. Sometimes it’s for Halloween, and sometimes it’s for ABC TV.
This is a moment I will treasure on @greatesthitsabc with @KelseaBallerini and @heather_deloach #GreatestHits pic.twitter.com/feylcZc5Nb
— David Wild (@Wildaboutmusic) July 8, 2016
“I’m not one to boast,” she told MTV a few years ago, “but my boyfriend, friends, sister and mother, whenever we’re in a conversation with a stranger, by the end they’ll bring it up and people will recognize me. People come up to me all the time with stories about how I changed their childhood and got them through a tough time of not being accepted.”