Episode 3 The Wonder of Bees with Martha Kearney

I'm Martha Kearney, during the week I work as a journalist

and presenter, but at the weekend, I keep bees.

Look at that, that's fantastic.

I've had hives in my garden for almost ten years.

But I've never had any training and I'm far from expert.

I just hope I don't get stung!

So this year I'm upping my game - with help from master beekeeper

John Everett.

One of the tricks is to clip one of the wings - of the queen.

It sounds rather cruel to me.

I'll be exploring the culture, science and history of beekeeping.

This is the greatest show on earth - the swarming of honey bees.

And I'll be trying to harvest the best honey I've ever had...

This is the best bit...

It's very nice indeed.

Early summer in Suffolk.

A time of pleasure and pain for the beekeeper.

The weather's finally warming up.

The bees in my garden are busy foraging for nectar

and pollen wherever they can find it.

This year, I've put three new colonies in an old-fashioned

meadow on my neighbours' land at Barton Grange,

where I hope they'll produce my first ever wild flower honey.

By this time of year, the colonies should be expanding fast.

The fields around the meadow are full of flowers and with

so much nectar and pollen available to feed up the young,

the queens are laying hundreds of eggs a day.

But this fecundity can present a challenge - the swarm.

Around this time of year swarming is a real problem actually,

and I've had many swarms over the years,

and the worst thing that can happen is you just go back

to your hive and you realise there's only half of the bees there

and they've swarmed and you haven't even seen them.

When the hive becomes overcrowded, the bees have a unique response.

More than half leave the hive in a swarm.

They take the old queen with them to look for a new home.

It's a natural form of reproduction.

While the scouts find a suitable spot,

the others cling together for warmth.

I'm sure my hives are ready to swarm

and I want to find out more about this extraordinary phenomenon.

I've come to Sussex University to ask bee expert

Professor Francis Ratnieks.

So what is it, exactly that triggers a swarm?

Swarming is the way that honey bee colonies naturally

reproduce where one colony becomes two.

Before half the bees can leave with the old queen,

they have to make a replacement queen for those who stay behind.

What happens is worker bees make queen cells which

look like an acorn cup.

And we can see, can't we, there's a couple of queen cells

-in here, aren't there?

-Yes, we can see several queen cells

and when a colony is swarming, they normally make you know, quite

a lot of queen cells. They make an heir and a spare plus a few more.

The larva in the queen cell begins life in the same way as a worker bee.

But the bees feed it with a special substance

secreted from a gland in their head.

The royal jelly has chemicals within it which

trigger the larva to develop as a queen instead of as a worker.

Because both workers and queens are female -

and a female larva can in principle can become either.

While we're talking, the bees in the observation hive in front of us

start behaving very strangely.

What's going on here? They're all getting quite agitated, aren't they?

Well, the hive here - the bees are actually running in all

directions and I think we're seeing the early stages of swarming.

In fact, looking through the window I can see quite a lot

-of bees flying around, so I think...

-Maybe we should go outside

-and have a look?

-Let's go outside and see what what's happening.

This is amazing to watch. The bees cluster with the old queen

around the entrance to the observation hive.

They'll wait here until they find a new place to make a home.

During swarming the bees are not at all aggressive. You can

stand here without any fear at all.

Francis is confident enough to handle them with no veil or gloves.

I'm a little more circumspect.

This is the greatest show on earth.

The swarming of honey bees.

It's one of the most dramatic things you can see and,

indeed I never get tired of the bees. They're so amazing in what they do.

This unique form of reproduction might be fascinating to witness,

but for a beekeeper a swarm is a mixed blessing.

Because you can end up losing your bees.

The problem for me is I want to get my wild flower honey

ready, and ready for the end of June, so that's quite

a deadline. If we get a swarm now that could ruin my chances.

I can't be at Barton Grange every day checking up on them,

so I want to find out from my beekeeping guru John Everett,

how to make sure I don't lose my bees when they swarm.

OK. Um, well these seem to have been doing

reasonably well, but let's see how they're getting on.

-Right, let me just give it a puff.

-Yep.

As soon as we open the brood box of the first hive,

we discover queen cells.

There's another queen cell there.

The workers have made a lot of them

and the larvae are almost ready to hatch.

Blimey, so many.

Because there are so many queen cells like this,

and because the hive is so overcrowded, I'm sure it's going to

swarm in the next day or two.

So what's your view of what's

the best thing to do about swarms? I mean, could you just let them go?

You could, but if we don't do anything we may lose the swarm.

Yes, which is a nuisance because that will affect our honey crop, won't it?

Yes, it certainly will. One of the tricks that we can get up

to is to clip one of the wings of the queen,

so if she does try to swarm - it's a bit like having a plane with

one engine on one side and none on the other -

she goes round in a circle and we're less likely to lose the swarm.

You probably think I'm very sentimental but it sounds rather

-cruel to me.

-I don't think so - all the tissue that is there is dead.

It's a bit like cutting toenails so it's not going to hurt her at all.

Oh, I don't know - I'm not sure about that.

-But, um...

-It's up to you - you choose.

Well, I'm...I'm interested

to see whether it's effective, so I think I'm happy to give it a go.

So if we see the queen -

I will take a couple of mils off one wing. There's the queen.

-Oh, there she is.

-And at the moment both her wings are the same

length and the trick is just to reduce one by a couple of mils.

So you're just taking a little bit off one of the wings...

I've cut off about two mils off her left wing.

It doesn't stop swarming,

but it does mean that it's much more likely that we'll find the swarm.

I'm incredibly impressed, John, by what you've done.

I mean it's such a delicate thing and if I...

if I had a go myself I think I'd probably end up decapitating

-the queen.

-It's quite normal for them to lose their back legs.

Really?! Oh, no that's awful. That's so cruel.

Now that we've clipped the wings,

if the bees do swarm I should easily find them

as the queen won't be able to travel far in her search for a new home.

But for some beekeepers, stopping swarms goes

against everything they believe.

Heidi Herrmann is one of them.

She runs a school of natural beekeeping at her home in Sussex.

You know, we hear so much about the bees are in trouble

and then you hear that the queen bees' wings

are being cut off by a beekeeper.

I think it's, um, it's a shame that that is being done.

Because you're basically frustrating, you're thwarting the colonies'

instinct in a very crude way and I don't think it makes much sense

to prevent natural reproduction of a creature

when that creature is in decline.

If you want to practice natural beekeeping in the sense of

um...that you want to get as close in your beekeeping as possible to

the natural colony life, then you also have to take responsibility.

Heidi doesn't try to stop swarms, instead

she keeps a constant watch for them.

If she sees a swarm she goes out

and collects it - like this one her husband caught on film last year.

There we go.

Once she's collected the bees she coaxes them into a new hive.

And ends up with a brand-new colony.

Come on, girls. Up you go.

This technique is all part of a natural approach to beekeeping.

Heidi believes in interfering as little as possible with the bees.

Controversially, she doesn't use chemicals to treat varroa.

She doesn't feed the bees with sugar syrup and she doesn't take

any honey unless she's sure the bees have enough to last the winter.

When you read all the beekeeping books say of the '50s

and '60s you find a much more respectful attitude towards

the...the whole being of the colony and what the colony needs.

Attitudes towards keeping bees have evolved over the centuries.

People have kept bees for honey

since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians.

At first bee hives were just hollow logs,

then woven straw baskets or "skeps" were used.

Skeps were common right up to the 19th century.

But although they now look quaint,

the only way to harvest the honey was to kill the bees.

So the wooden hive with removable frames that we use today,

was a big advance.

But natural beekeepers like Heidi now use a new kind of hive that

brings the skep into the modern age, it's called a sun hive.

I've never seen anything like this, to be perfectly honest.

The idea here is that you offer the bees

a hive in the archetypal shape

in which the bees in the wild

would construct their brood nest. But why is it hanging high up?

Unequivocally when bees are able to choose their own homes

it will be between 2.5 and 6m off the ground.

In other words the bee is not an animal that wishes to live on the earth.

They only live on the earth because we want them

on the earth because we want to have it easy to take the honey out.

So do you not get any honey?

You would never take anything out of this hive structure.

But if your bees are doing very well

you will then have the possibility of mounting

on the top a super and they can put some surplus into that box.

The sun hives have a unique construction inside too.

I will wear some simple decorators goggles -

this is just a sensible thing to protect your eyes.

Well, you're much braver than I am.

Heidi claims that her non-invasive approach makes

the bees much less likely to sting her.

Let's just take that little one out.

Very good, girls. You see here the marvel of bees

engaged in the process of building comb - forming these chains.

-Absolutely beautiful.

-That shape reminds me very much

of a wild bees' nest that I was once shown in Nevis in the Caribbean.

Precisely.

Unlike my hives these have no frames of wax foundation for the bees

to make their comb.

Instead, there are simple curved wooden bars.

This shape here is actually exactly

-the shape of the hive - it's beautifully thought out.

-Yeah.

While I'm away from Suffolk, I've asked the owners of the meadow,

Matthew and Nick, to keep an eye on my hives.

Then, one afternoon in June, the inevitable happens.

Martha, it's Matthew.

The bees on the far left hand hive are swarming.

They're all piling out in numbers

and they're all gathering at the top.

So is there anything you want us to do, Martha?

So you want... We put a box underneath and try and brush them

into a box, is that correct, to then...?

Well, Nick's got... Nick's got a bee outfit so maybe he can try

and give it a go.

Matthew is a bit scared about coming too close...

without any protection.

With her wings clipped, the queen has only been able to fly as far as

the edge of the hive, so the swarm is easy to find, even for a novice.

-Have you done this before, Nick?

-Never. No, not at all.

I would never have thought they would be so easy to handle.

There's one main core which I guess is where the queen is.

Nick pours the bees into a box with just a few frames called a nuc box.

They'll be happy enough here until the colony builds up.

It's a new home.

Closer into the meadow.

Well, I think I've caught the bug now.

Nick and Matthew have done a fantastic job.

And the wing clipping does seem to have helped make it easier to

catch the swarm.

I now have a whole extra colony, but the cedar hive is also getting

very crowded and I'm determined not to lose it to another swarm.

I need to find a way of making sure they swarm

while I'm on hand to collect them.

And John thinks he might have a solution.

We could make an artificial swarm.

So we'll take the old queen out

and if we do that, that's the swarm, isn't it?

-They'll follow her.

-Yeah, and we'll shake some bees on her

-and see what happens.

-OK, brilliant. I like this experiment.

I have never actually tried to make the swarm go into a tree

-or anything - but there's always a first, isn't there?

-Yeah.

But this is what would happen

in the wild if you left it alone.

But of course it could just go off

two miles and we'd lose the bees - and we don't want that to happen.

First he finds a queen cell ready to hatch.

Then he catches the queen as she emerges.

There's a brand-new queen.

We'll keep this new queen in the hive to rebuild the colony,

while we take the old queen

and about half the bees to make the artificial swarm.

I have put the queen in this little box.

So I'm going to close her up without crushing her.

Go back, lady.

-So if we hang that on there.

-Yes.

-And then we'll

-shake some bees and see what happens.

-OK, look, well I know

-when they've swarmed before they like gate posts, don't they?

-Yeah.

The queen's powerful pheromones make the worker bees gather around her.

Their swarming instinct makes them docile.

This is exactly what a swarm does, isn't it? This is a swarm.

This looks exactly like a swarm in the wild.

The only difference between this

and a natural swarm is that we've made it happen when we wanted it.

Look at that, look at them clinging all around. So shall

-I just... Shall I put it in the...?

-Yeah, just...

Yeah, go right down to the bottom.

It's so weird when you do this.

It's as if they're one substance - like syrup or something, isn't it?

They kind of pour themselves on to the card.

'We take the swarm of bees and give them

'a new home in a nuc box with six frames.

'They can now start to build up a new colony.'

So I've got a queen and some frames of bees.

So, very good day's beekeeping, actually. I'm very glad about this.

I now have my original three hives

and two new fledgling colonies in nuc boxes.

With a bit of luck,

I should have plenty of honey to harvest in a few weeks.

At my cottage, I have one hive which is already heavy with honey.

These bees are very productive - but also ferocious.

I've asked my beekeeping friend Jan Dryburgh, who's much braver than me,

to help work out if there's any honey ready to extract.

What I want to have a look at today

is the terrifyingly angry, vicious hive.

I'm only just going to see whether I'm in a position to extract any honey, but I'm not going down

-into the brood box - because they're too frightening.

-Right, OK.

The pleasure of honey and the pain of bee stings inspired

one of my favourite paintings - Lucas Cranach The Elder's

Cupid Complaining To Venus at the National Gallery.

Cupid has stolen some honeycomb from wild bees,

but when he gets stung, he comes crying to his mother.

It's an old story told by the Greek poet Theocritus.

And it captures the paradox of man's relationship with the honey bee.

Thing about the angry bees - they're very productive.

-They are, yes, whatever people say about it.

-Yeah.

Wow!

-Yes.

-This is fantastic - this is really very, very heavy.

-This is really good, isn't it?

-Yes.

-And all sealed.

-My goodness.

-So I think we can assume there is

loads in here. Shall we pop this over here? Are you able to help me?

See how heavy it is.

-I couldn't manage this on my own.

-Right.

And let's see if there's any worth taking out. Yeah, look,

more. Do you think that's enough to take out or not yet?

I think you probably could.

'We decide to extract the first batch of honey the next day.

'But first we have to clear the bees from the super.'

So I'm going to just pop this on.

So this is called a Canadian clearing board.

The bees can go down and they can't come back up.

So it will be nice and clear for me tomorrow when I come

and extract them. You leave them on for a day.

When the bees return from foraging they won't be able

to get back into the super, leaving it bee-free for the extraction.

Even though they scare me to death,

they're easily my most productive bees.

In one super alone we've got... an awful lot of honey.

A hive can produce a pound of honey in a day.

The bees will visit about two million flowers and fly 50,000 miles

to make it.

It takes 12 bees a lifetime to produce one teaspoon of honey.

To transform the nectar into honey, the foragers transfer it to bees back at the hive.

They combine the nectar with an enzyme in their stomach

and then regurgitate it which changes its chemical composition.

Then the bees flap their wings to evaporate most of the moisture.

This thickens the honey and stops it from fermenting.

This takes a further three days.

Then the bees cap the cell with wax so the honey will be there

when they need it for food.

We've got um...everything ready here. This is the extractor.

'The next day, I'm ready to harvest the honey from the hive of angry

'bees that I left at my cottage.

'This will be the very first crop of the year.

'I've roped in help from my husband Chris,

'a rather reluctant beekeeping assistant.'

-This is really heavy.

-Is it really heavy?

-Yeah.

OK, I think I managed to get all the bees off.

-I hope you got all the bees off!

-Yeah.

So what I'm going to do is - the bees will have

covered their honey with this cap of wax

and I need to cut it off so

that all the honey can come out once we put it in into the extractor.

This really is one of the best moments in the whole beekeeping

year. There's something quite satisfying about just

cutting off the cappings with a hot knife revealing the luscious

honey down below.

Lovely. OK, Chris.

Right, so, I get that.

We're using a centrifugal extractor,

which takes the frames into the barrel ready to be spun round.

And you sort of rest it against the side like that.

You can get six frames in there.

This is the best bit.

Mm, very nice honey.

Yeah, it's good.

So you've got... Have you got six?

-Yeah, all six ready to go.

-All right, brilliant.

My favourite bit. The one bit I like.

This kind of honey extractor was invented in 1865, by

an Italian Major, Francisco de Hruschka.

Before that the only way to get the liquid was to destroy the honeycomb.

De Hruschka's simple invention meant you could

take out the honey without damaging the comb -

which could then be returned to the hive,

saving the bees a vast amount of time and effort

re-building it from scratch.

It revolutionised the honey industry.

Do you need me to have a go?

No, it's fine. Yeah, there's plenty

-coming out at the bottom there.

-Is there? Good.

-It's all

on the sides at the moment - just takes a bit of time to drip down.

Ever thought about us getting an electric one?

Where's the fun in that?

I think I might take these out now. I think they're spent as they say.

Once we've spun all eight frames from the super, it's time to

tap off the honey and find out how much my angry bees have made.

-There he goes. Oh, yeah!

-Fantastic.

-Check that out.

-I love this bit.

So much of it, isn't there?

Wonderful. Yes! We love this.

There's a lot coming out of that, isn't there?

Yeah, there we go.

We filter the honey to get rid of any wax or bits of dead bee

and then put it in sterile jars.

First jar of honey. Fantastic.

One two, three, we've got five pounds out already

and look how much more there is in there.

And this is loads.

At the cottage, my angry bees have had a productive spring.

Still lots left in there.

It's not bad, is it, for one super?

I'm pleased to get so many jars this early on.

That's good for us, isn't it?

Yeah. I think, what did we get? 40...42 of those little half

pound jars, so 21 pounds of honey from one super. Very good.

It's very good actually, yeah.

Maybe we should go into business.

'And now the moment of truth.'

Right - the first honey of the year.

Mm, it's nice.

That's nice, isn't' it? Honey on toast. It's just...

Well, I'm really enjoying it.

It's very... Our kind of... Our usual vintage,

-I would say. Spring honey.

-Classic spring honey.

Yeah, classic spring honey.

Next time, I learn about the secret of the bees'

unique form of communication.

This is the waggle dance. It's the most sophisticated

form of communication that a non-human can do.

I discover the powerful properties of Manuka honey...

In medicine, bugs have become resistant to almost

everything man made, but never to honey.

And find out if the bees on the meadow have made my first

true wildflower honey.

-That really tastes of wild flowers.

-Thank you.