Episode 2 Hive Alive

Welcome to the world of the honeybee,

surely one of the most incredible insects on Earth.

Bees have been around since the age of the dinosaurs.

And human beings have been after their honey for thousands of years.

They're one of the most numerous species on the planet,

with literally trillions of individuals.

So you'd think we'd know absolutely everything there is to know about

these amazing creatures, but there's still so much more to discover.

And that is what we are going to do, we are going to lift the lid

on the secret life of the honeybee as never before in Hive Alive.

-I'm Martha Kearney.

-And I'm Chris Packham. Welcome to Hive Alive.

We are going to be using cutting-edge technology

and the very latest science to unravel the mysteries

of that most iconic insect of the British summer - the honeybee.

We are back in deepest Somerset.

It is high summer and the air is thick with bees.

And what an eventful week they've had.

Extraordinary dramas have been playing out in our bees' lives.

We've got our very own hives

bugged round-the-clock to follow our bees' every move.

Our tagged bees are now out foraging for nectar,

so we've got our helicopter on stand-by to follow them

on the most dangerous mission of their lives.

And we will be weighing our hive to find out if our bees are making

enough honey to get the colony through the winter.

We'll also be looking at how the bees interact with our world and

asking the million dollar question - what have bees ever done for us?

I'm pleased to say we are joined by our resident bee expert,

Professor Adam Hart. Adam, this week

it is sex and violence, I can't wait.

And there is plenty of it in the hive.

We'll see how the queen mates with literally

dozens of suitors and how the males die horribly as a result.

And in the interest of science, I'll find out exactly what happens

to my body when I get stung.

-I can't wait for that bit especially.

-I can.

That's the sadist in me.

Now, our bees only have to the end of summer to collect enough nectar

to make their supplies of honey.

So, let's go straight to the hives and see how they are doing.

From the outside, it is all looking good.

As the bees approach, their bodies are angled downwards.

This suggests that they are carrying full loads of nectar.

But let's have a look inside.

OK, let's get one of these frames out.

-Let's go for...

-It always strikes me as being a bit like safe cracking.

-Yeah.

-There is an art to it, but you are stealing something.

You have to be very, very gentle,

but basically, we are stealing from them.

Here we go, let's flip this frame out. Look at that.

Wow, look at that.

That's loaded with honey, isn't it?

Yeah. And don't just look at it, feel it as well.

Feel the weight of that. It has got a real heft to it.

-Oh, it has! That has got to weigh about a kilogram.

-Yeah.

It is a huge amount. When you think about the colossal amount of work.

And it is just beautiful. If we just go like that, you can see...

-Look at it.

-That's honey.

That's not nectar, that is processed honey.

-Glistening in the sunshine.

-Absolutely beautiful.

That's fantastic, isn't it?

What a work of art.

This is honeybee technology, because it is not just the honey

which is processed from nectar, it is also all this wax

-they're storing, and they have made that in their wax gland.

-Yeah.

So this is all about storing all that resources.

They are bottling summer. They are storing summer for the winter.

Piling in with it.

What's happening here is when each foraging bee returns to the hive,

she passes her load of nectar onto one of the younger bees

so she can head straight back out to the flowers as quickly as possible.

The younger bee then starts to turn the nectar into honey.

But she doesn't just put it into the comb and wait,

it is actually a very sophisticated process.

-Now, there's one actually doing it.

-Yeah.

-Look, look, there is one depositing honey in the cell as we speak.

-Yeah.

Several in fact, look at that.

Well, I say they are putting it in...

You can see, she's got her mouth part out.

She is basically regurgitating that nectar, evaporating it.

So she is processing the honey physically.

They add an enzyme to it that breaks down the sucrose, which is the

sugar we put on cornflakes and that you find in nectar,

into fructose and glucose. That is the first thing.

They're physically processing it.

So they are using their mouthparts to evaporate the water,

to make it thicker and more viscous.

And they are also lowering the pH,

so they are making it more acidic, which helps to store it.

OK, here's a question for you, how much honey can an individual

worker add to the hive during the course of its foraging period?

Well, a good forager with a nice, long foraging career

will collect about a quarter of a teaspoon, which is

pretty much what is left on your knife when you throw it in the sink.

Oh, no! I'm going to think about that now.

You are throwing away all lifetime of a bee's effort if you do that.

Yeah. To make a pan of honey, to make a jar of honey, that is

about two million flower visits,

and it's the equivalent flying of about twice around the world, about

50,000 miles, and that is just to make one jar of honey.

You know, this frame is probably about four times around the world -

100,000 miles of foraging collectively.

This should be priced, you know, more expensive than gold,

shouldn't it, for all of that effort?

The scale of their endeavour, you know,

-per hive, is quite astonishing, isn't it?

-Yeah.

This is a colossal factory.

And it is a factory all about growing new bees

and this stuff here - storing honey for the winter.

Our hive needs to be making two or three kilos of honey

every week during the summer

so the bees will have enough food stored to survive the winter, when

there are no flowers around and, therefore, no nectar to collect.

Last week, our hive weighed just over 53 kilos,

so this week we really want it to be around 55 or maybe 56

if the bees are going to be on course to meet their target.

But that's not quite what we found.

Now, we have been weighing this hive for the last week,

hoping that it would have put on weight, in terms of added honey,

added pollen, but what has actually happened?

Yeah. Actually, we have seen a decrease in the weight.

-Can you see that graph there?

-Yeah.

So this first one, don't get fooled by that,

that's nothing too dramatic.

That's John maintaining the hives and doing some beekeeping work.

This second little dip there, though, that is bees leaving.

This hive swarmed and about two and half kilos of bees left en masse.

So that's weight of bee loss.

So three days ago, during the morning,

around 15,000 or 20,000 bees left the hive in just under an hour.

That is over half of the colony.

Clearly, our bees didn't leave the safety of their hive without

a very good reason. After all, they are heading out into the unknown.

I've witnessed swarms from my own hives

and often wondered how the bees decide that it is time for them

to make such a potentially risky move en masse.

If we think of the colony as a superorganism, with all the bees

as cells, that organism needs to reproduce.

And one colony becoming two,

or swarming as we call it, is how they do it.

They don't immediately find somewhere to live.

They rest up in a temporary kind of cluster,

which is when most people see them.

And then scouts go out to find a new place to nest.

When they come back, they'll start doing the waggle dance

on the outside of the swarm

so that other bees can go and check out the sites they've found.

They can spend some hours there, sometimes even overnight there

if they can't find anywhere.

And this temporary accommodation, in my experience,

is usually the most inconvenient place you could possibly imagine.

I've found myself up a 20-foot ladder against a hawthorn tree, which is

rather more like an overgrown bush, with, what, you know,

30,000 bees hanging in front of me,

trying to cut them off from the branch and get them in a box.

Which is the classic way of getting a swarm.

To start with, this type of thing looks quite dangerous, but actually

bees when they're swarming are quite chilled out.

The queen is in the middle. They don't want any trouble, they

-just want to find somewhere to live.

-Yeah. So in fact, if you see a swarm,

just contact your local beekeeper and they'll be very glad to come

and get a hold of these, because for them,

-it means they've got an extra colony.

-It's good for everyone.

But when our bees swarmed,

the colony didn't just lose its army of workers. The queen left, too.

And that left our hive facing a battle for survival.

So what is next?

The queen leaving set off an extraordinary drama in our hive,

which began with a violent

and deadly struggle to decide who will become the new queen.

We can't see inside our hive, but here is some amazing footage

that reveals what goes on when the new queen seizes the crown.

And it is pretty gruesome.

Several wannabe queens are now emerging.

One determined bee seeks out her rivals,

both those who have just emerged and those still in their cells.

She dispatches them ruthlessly with her special sting.

A sting she can use again and again.

Something just like this has been going on inside our own hive

over the past few days.

So by now, there is almost certainly a new queen in place.

But that's not the end of the swarming drama.

Because at some stage,

the new virgin queen leaves the hive

with just one thing on her mind.

Nothing is as astonishing as bee sex.

This is what happens.

The drones will leave the nest

and they will go to what we call a congregation area en masse.

Up to 25,000 drones might aggregate in one of these places.

And when a virgin queen arrives, all hell's let loose.

They swarm after her, and the lucky one gets to drop down onto her back.

And the whole process of mating is over in just a couple of seconds.

And it is pretty violent.

Haemostatic pressure forces the penis out of the male's body

at a tremendous pace and into the abdomen of the female,

with such force that it quite literally explodes.

And get this, if you stand beneath one of these congregation areas

and there is a queen there being mated, the exploding penis is

so loud that the human ear can hear an audible pop.

-HE MAKES A POPPING SOUND

-..Goes the penis.

Leaving the head of the penis inside the female to block

the semen in place.

Each male wants to try and ensure the success of the process

because, as you probably imagine, with the exploding penis,

the process is fatal.

He then falls to the ground, quite literally spent, to die.

The queen may go on to mate with ten to 20 males,

sometimes even more.

And the males which don't get to breed, well,

they eventually get thrown out of the hive to die.

Sounds harsh, doesn't it?

You mate, you die. You fail to mate, you die.

It is the cruel logic of nature which makes sex work for honeybees.

Given that the swarm happened three days ago, it is

likely that our new queen has already mated.

So by now, she'll be back in our hive, busy laying thousands of eggs

every day to replace the bees that left in the swarm.

Outside the hive, the foragers that remain,

less than half the original number,

have now gone into overdrive to rebuild the colony to full strength.

Honeybees are driven by one overriding principle -

to ensure the long-term survival of their hive.

To do that, they need to make honey, which of course,

we then harvest for ourselves.

But when you stop and ask what have bees ever done for us,

well, it is about a lot more than honey.

Meet Gareth Baker. He is a beekeeper,

but on a rather grander scale than I am.

For him, it is a living.

All through the spring and summer, Gareth and his bees are on the move.

And what they are about to do has a major impact on our shopping baskets.

On his Herefordshire fruit farm,

James Waltham is keenly awaiting their appearance.

The arrival of the honeybee hives feels like the start of spring

and the promise of a good harvest to come.

When the blossom arrives,

we know that we need to start introducing the bees.

The blossom on its own is actually a false promise,

cos without full pollination, it means nothing.

And that's where our bees come in.

Without the help of honeybees and other pollinators, Britain's

fruit crops would never be able to reproduce on such a massive scale.

And no reproduction means no fruit in our fruit bowls.

Gareth's bees have arrived at their destination.

-Hiya, James.

-Hey, Gareth, how are you?

-Not too bad.

-The strawberries up at the top?

-Yeah, just around the corner.

-OK.

-Cheers, thanks.

-Thanks, James.

What we have got to do with these, before we bring them in,

is have a quick look and make sure

they're fairly quiet.

Because as you'll see,

the proximity to the hive to pickers and workers is relatively close.

So my bees need to work at the same time as those guys do.

The one thing that always amazes me -

you put them down, then you'll see them

all sort of hovering around the hive entrance, orientating,

getting to grips with position of the sun, the hive, landmarks.

But it doesn't take long, literally five minutes later,

they are back with a load of shopping.

And that's what bees do, they just don't stop.

They just get on with the job.

And it is not just fruit.

Up and down the country, and indeed all over the world, a hidden

army of billions of honeybees is helping to put food on our plates.

Martha, I'm going to be very honest with you.

This is not a typical example of the crisp weekly shop.

It is devoid of expensive microwave meals.

-No takeaways either.

-No takeaways.

But what it does have - a collection of things which bees offer us,

through the process of pollination, and a few that they don't as well.

Well, we can see if we start taking things away that are created

by the bees, pollinated by the bees, it is going to be a dull old world.

-I'm going to go for an easy one first of all. Obviously, honey.

-The honey.

-That would be tragic for me, losing the honey.

-OK.

Well, tragic for me, because I'm a furtive cleaner, would be

the beeswax in spray and other form.

Because that, obviously, comes from the bees themselves.

And some low-hanging fruit here. Obviously, no apples.

I mean, the apple tree in my garden was filled with honeybees in there.

Exactly. And other fruits from other parts of Europe or the world -

the orange, I'm sure there is a lemon in here. Yeah, another orange.

Oh, lemon-blossom honey is fantastic. I brought some back from Italy.

-Absolutely delicious.

-Too posh for me. You don't

get that in the supermarkets where I go to get my microwave meals.

Then, of course, strawberries. I do buy these on the side of the road.

Good English strawberries, bee pollinated.

-Fancy not being able to eat those cos there weren't bees.

-Oh, God.

-I knew you were going to do that.

-Mm.

And then we have got our vegetables, of course.

In fact, the whole of this garden behind us,

I mean, that would be gone, wouldn't it? Most of it.

The lettuces, we can see the beans, broad beans, all that...

-That would all be gone.

-And all the flavouring with these herbs.

-Yeah, the chives, you're right.

-They wouldn't prosper either.

Indirectly, we have got the things that are made from fruit.

So our preserves, jams, marmalades, they'd have to go.

And down here, slightly obscure but nevertheless, mustard.

Mustard flowers are pollinated by bees, so we'd be short of that.

Which would be a great shame.

-And that just leaves us with our beverages.

-Our beverages.

-So what've we got here? We've got coffee.

-Mm-hm.

-We've got tea.

-Yeah.

-Well, tea isn't insect pollinated, but coffee is.

-Coffee, oh, right.

That's a bit of a disaster for people at breakfast, isn't it?

So all we've got left is the bread, the tea and some rice.

-Rice, which is wind pollinated, I guess.

-Mm-hm.

-And pasta.

I mean, I like pasta, but pasta without tomato sauce?

It's not going to be a very tasty or nutritious diet at all, is it?

It'd be a boring old world, wouldn't it, if this was our food.

Life for a worker bee is far from boring.

They are constantly changing their roles throughout their lives.

So, to find out how this works, we tagged two sets of newly emerged

bees two weeks apart - 100 with red tags and 100 more with white ones.

Last week,

the younger white-tagged bees were doing all sorts of different

roles inside the hive,

everything from nursing the young to making honey - whilst the older,

red-tagged bees were heading out to forage for nectar.

The question is, how are they doing now?

-Hello, Adam.

-Hi, Chris.

-Back at the observation hive.

It's glass on the sides

so we can see inside and exactly what the bees are doing.

-What are they doing at the moment?

-Superb timing, Chris.

Right in the entrance is one of our red-marked bees.

This is one of the bees we marked last week

just coming back into the hive here.

I was pretty concerned that we'd lost quite a lot of them,

we couldn't see them in the hive,

but they've been out foraging. This one is just coming back in.

-What about that?

-This is fantastic.

Now, our other red bees...

Look, there's a couple down here in that corner.

Yeah, that's what we are seeing.

They have read the textbooks for once.

They're down here, towards the bottom of the hive,

coming in and out with that forage. The white-marked bees,

the much younger bees, are around the rest of the hive,

doing those in-the-hive jobs.

So they are internal duties, the red ones are out.

-Have we lost any of those red ones, do you think?

-For sure.

You can see just eyeballing the colony,

particularly in the evening, there are far fewer of the red bees.

They have got lost, some of them, in predative...

Some of them have just worn out.

It's been really good foraging the last week,

so they've been busy.

But they've only been going in and out for a week. Is that typical?

They're going to burn out in a week?

Yeah, they can burn out in a week if it's really good.

They can last three or four weeks if they rest up a little bit.

But their foraging lives are quite short.

That's why it is so important they do the jobs the white ones

-are doing in the middle, to get that investment back.

-OK.

Some great news here as well.

Last week, we saw bee 78 just taking her first flight out foraging,

and she is back in the hive now.

She has been busy across the week, still contributing to the hive,

bringing in that nectar and pollen. She is doing brilliantly.

She is just having a wander around now

and she'll be back out into the field to collect more.

Bee 78 is doing pretty well,

given that foraging honeybees don't last forever.

Eventually, after flying several hundred miles, they simply wear out.

And in good flying weather like this,

she is probably coming towards the end of her life.

They have really upped the tempo.

There is lots of foraging going on.

-You can actually hear that there is a real humming.

-OK, let's listen.

THEY HUM

It's definitely a lot more intense, isn't it?

And we have got all this lovely capped honey up here

and lots of waggle dancing going on in lots

of different directions, so they're really going out,

getting that nectar and pollinating.

Look at this. It's really busy here, isn't it?

A lot busier than it was last week.

Some of them aren't waggle dancing, but they are trembling.

That is basically telling the hive

that they need more of those nectar receivers down here.

Because what is happening is the forage is coming in

and it is a bit like waiting too long at a checkout.

She is waiting too long.

So instead of doing the waggle dance, she does this tremble dance,

and that brings more checkout operators down,

more of those nectar receivers.

There is a really finely tuned business going on here,

and they need to make everything absolutely efficient.

And there's something else going on.

Last week, we interpreted our bees' waggle dance.

And using our helicopter, we managed to track them down

to a new source of nectar in a distant hedgerow.

This week, we've seen all sorts of different waggle dances.

This one here is shorter and it is pointing in a completely

different direction, more or less due west.

And this time, when our helicopter followed our bees'

coded directions, it ended up right here, in our garden.

One advantage of gardens is that new plants are coming into bloom

all the time.

And as they do, the bees are quick to seek out these new sources of nectar.

So what is on the menu this week?

To find out, I caught up with the garden's owner, Sarah Mead.

These plants the bees are going crazy about.

They do really seem to love it. This is Jacob's ladder.

And it comes in, you know, pale blues and whites and all sorts.

But it is a lovely, simple flower and it does seem

to attract lots and lots of bees.

-You've got lots of foxgloves, which I know bumblebees like.

-Yes.

-Yes, cos they can get right into those big flowers.

-Yes.

It's lovely when you see a big, furry bottom sticking out,

-it's great.

-Yeah. Only on plants, I find.

-Yeah!

So gardeners can help bees,

but helping the bees also helps the garden.

The bees are out there buzzing away, pollinating everything for me,

so it is a win-win, really.

Bees are totally addictive.

It's fascinating for me to come out of an evening, particularly,

just early, early evening, and just see where the action is.

I do that all the time.

I stand in front of my beehives, or just

looking at flowers in the garden, and I start to get transfixed.

I just watch them and watch them.

It is a lovely thing when we are all so busy and life is

so complicated, watching something very simple

and very pure happening right in front of you and just thinking,

"You know, that is what life is about, isn't it?"

So far, on Hive Alive,

we've seen the explosive sex life of the queen bee

and how the males are quite literally dumped.

Still to come, how bees can save life and limb through the wonder of honey.

We harvest the fruits of our hive.

That is fantastic.

Liquid summer sunshine.

But first, Adam discovers why every bee has a sting in its tail.

If you've ever been stung by a bee, as I have many times,

you might have wondered what actually happens

when that venom enters your body.

Well, wonder no more.

For this experiment, I'm going to need four things -

Adam, his arm,

our paramedic, Genevra, just in case,

and a bee with impeccable qualifications.

She is an old forager out of the observation hive.

-She is loaded full of venom.

-Mm-hm.

Now, as I am sure you all know, when a bee stings, it invariably dies.

And this is because it has a barbed sting,

which lodges tightly in the flesh.

So if you dislodge the insect or it flies away,

it tears that mechanism out of the back of its body

and it then dies through a process of dehydration

over a couple of hours.

Now, obviously, we don't want that to happen.

So what I am going to do is apply the bee very carefully to

Adam's arm here, and then I'm going to use these tweezers

to pull the stinger back out, so it retains it intact in its body.

And it should be perfectly OK.

That's the bee. I'm not sure about Adam.

-You ready?

-Yeah, let's find out.

-OK. Just about here, then?

-Yep, that looks about right.

-Here we go. OK.

-Ah! There we go. Now.

-There it is.

-Yeah.

-I can see the stinger is in.

-Ow.

-And I've left it in for two or three seconds

-because it is that amount of time that it takes.

-Yeah.

-It is getting stronger now, yeah, yeah.

-There we go.

-Ow.

Hold on, I'll get that stinger out, I don't want to harm this bee.

I don't care about you, it is the bee that counts.

I've got it, I've got it!

-Excellent!

-Nicely done.

-That's nicely done.

-There we are.

-Wow.

-And I got it out intact.

-Ouch.

-Superb.

Well, I'm going to leave that bee to go about her business. Not me.

-And there she goes. How does it feel, then?

-Ah, it's painful.

It feels very much like a match head or something, it is a burning pain.

And I can feel it spreading now, although I can't see too much.

It is just discolouring there, isn't it? A little bit.

Genevra, what is happening to his heart rate?

My pulse has gone up, I can feel that.

Yes, it has gone up to 96.

-We took a resting pulse rate earlier, it was 75.

-Up to 96?

It has gone up to 96, yes.

That is the adrenaline coursing through his body.

Pretty quickly. What about blood pressure?

Well, we took a resting blood pressure earlier that was 134/86.

-So I'll take another one now.

-OK.

And we'll see what has happened.

-The pain has really diminished now.

-Has it?

Yeah, it has really gone down.

I can feel it, but it is not that sharp...sting. It's well named!

-Can you see that?

-I can see...

-It is just starting to come up there.

That is a little inflammatory response that is developing.

That is starting to swell now.

-Blood pressure?

-Blood pressure is 165/95.

So it has gone up quite a bit.

And part of that is due to the pain response.

OK. Now, look, Adam, put your arm

in front of that thermal imaging camera.

Because it does burn, but whether that's a neurological

reaction or a genuine temperature thing, we don't know, do we?

-We'll find out.

-Let's just see, has it heated up your arm?

-Yes.

-It has!

-Yes, it has.

-Has it?

-Yeah, there is a big white spot.

That is really nice, actually.

-I like it when an experiment goes well, don't you?

-Yeah.

-That's information. I can feel that. And you can see it.

-Look at that.

Now it has swollen into a little lump with a red spot at the centre.

-Yep.

-It is quite a cocktail of chemicals that they have evolved to

-punish any intruder near the hive.

-Yeah.

I was saying the pain was diminishing, but actually,

it is building a little bit again, I think.

My system is starting to react to it again.

And it is a very sharp reminder.

It is a great message, "Leave my nest alone." And it works.

Genevra, over the years, people have said to me

that you can alleviate suffering from a bee sting by rubbing

on clay, scraping the site with a copper coin or urinating on it.

I am presuming that you, as a professional,

wouldn't advocate any of these.

What would you tell people to do if they did get stung?

The best thing would be to get rid of the sting as soon as possible.

And then just treat it with anti-histamines.

You can see the way the skin has swollen.

If you get that all over your body, if your lips start swelling,

if your tongue starts swelling, If your chest feels a bit tight...

-That's anaphylactic.

-That's heading towards anaphylaxis.

And especially if the breathing is involved...compromised,

call an ambulance immediately.

So, this is painful. And it is swelling up.

There is clearly a localised response.

But this isn't anything to worry about, this is what a bee sting is.

-Yes.

-And of course, bees are doing it for good reason.

We shouldn't give the bee any bad press here at all,

should we? They are protecting their investment,

-and it is some investment.

-Absolutely.

The only times I've been stung by bees, apart from now,

thanks to you, is when I am messing around with beehives,

doing research or trying to do some beekeeping.

-It is really quite unusual to get stung, actually.

-Yeah.

Away from the hive,

you are only ever going to get stung by a bee if you try to harm

-it, or inadvertently rest upon it or something like that.

-Yeah.

It is not something to be fearful of.

So, what is the prognosis?

What is going to happen to Adam's arm over the next couple of hours?

We'll give him some antihistamines and, hopefully,

that should start calming down the response.

-So you are going to survive, mate.

-I'm going to survive.

-Well done.

-Thank you.

-Doing a great job for science, there.

Bees sometimes have been used by people for medicinal purposes.

They have deliberately applied them to get them to sting,

particularly those who suffer from arthritis and rheumatism.

It is said to alleviate the symptoms of these diseases,

probably because that apitoxin has anti-inflammatories in it.

Well, the jury is out on this, but one thing is sure,

and that is that honey definitely has some medical qualities.

This is where they cut a lot of the dead flesh out.

So, when I used to wiggle my fingers,

you used to be able to see the bones going on in there.

Since 2006, Sam Edwards has been fighting a rare skin condition.

It all started in Sam's job as a maintenance engineer,

cleaning out an ornamental fish pond.

It had been neglected for years because it was pea green.

It had dead fish in it.

And as I put my hand in, this carp came up to the surface

and just brushed through my glove, and it just caused a small cut.

And I didn't really think much more of it

until about ten to 15 days later when my right arm started to

go into large lumps from the wrist

to the top of the forearm.

They start off quite large

and then they go very black

and necrotic, which is basically dead tissue.

The smell...

..was like if I was rotting.

Meanwhile, things were getting even worse.

The arm went black.

And it went down the other arm.

And then it started going up one leg.

So I am in a bit of a panic now.

Pain-wise, it was like being in a deep fat fryer,

putting your hand in a deep fat fryer 24 hours a day.

Finally, a visiting doctor from overseas recognised Sam's symptoms.

He said, "Yeah, you have an infection called

"Mycobacterium marinum,"

which is derived from fish. They get it lot in their country.

Come on, let's go.

The doctors tried fighting the infection with antibiotics,

but the pills gave Sam jaundice, so had to be stopped.

They started talking about multiple amputations.

With prospects at rock bottom, the doctors were trying almost anything.

Seaweed, um, maggots...

The maggot one was quite interesting because they...

they come in little pots. And they put maggots on. But they died.

And they weren't entirely sure why they died.

So they didn't try the maggots again.

Then, just before Christmas, 2013,

someone suggested that Sam try manuka honey dressings.

Manuka honey comes from New Zealand

and is produced by bees that feed on the manuka plant.

It can be used in a variety of cases -

surgical incisions, burns and even malignant wounds.

The results, for Sam at least, have been impressive.

It's life-changing.

Within such a short space of time,

I have never seen my wounds

heal so progressively.

The smell is gone.

Within three months, I am almost back to normal.

They did sting a little bit.

It is also like the bee is a little bit reluctant to give its honey

away without a little bit of pain.

So they do sting when you put them on.

I've been told the Mycobacterium marinum is still floating around

in my system and if I get knocked or banged, it might start again.

But I would say I am 99.9% cured.

This treatment won't work for everyone, but the doctors do

believe that the honey has played a crucial part in Sam's recovery.

People look at bees as a little insect that

swarms around their picnic, wanting to sting them.

I look at a bee now as a little friend,

who sort of helped me out when I really needed it.

A humble little bee.

You would never in a million years think something so small

can have such a huge impact on a different species.

Sam's story is a remarkable one.

I'm fascinated by how we might be able to use honey

in the fight against the many forms of bacteria

that are becoming resistant to treatment with antibiotics.

To find out more, I visited microbiologist Rose Cooper.

So, how do you go about testing these properties that honey could have?

We've used a number of techniques.

One of them has been to look at the changes

in the structure of the bacteria using electron microscopy.

Electron microscopes can magnify a staggering ten million times,

allowing scientists to see exactly what affects the honey has

on the bacteria.

In some cases, the results have been really astonishing.

Honey doesn't just reduce the number of bacteria,

it also halts their progress by stopping them reproducing.

To reveal how, Rose shows me inside the cells of the dreaded

hospital superbug MRSA.

These are untreated bacteria. They are quite happy.

They are rounded,

they are growing and they will divide every 30 minutes.

I like the idea of happy bacteria, by the way.

-It is a bit of a contradiction in terms.

-Yes.

-Carry on.

-So these...

In fact, this is treated with honey.

And you see that these bacteria have accumulated with this crossed wall.

They can't divide.

So the honey is stopping these bacteria dividing.

If they can't divide, they can't go on to form an infection.

And this is honey acting alone? This is honey without any antibiotics?

That's right. That is just manuka honey on its own.

It seems to have different effects on different bacteria.

This is another gram-negative bacterium that causes wound

infections.

And here you see the honey has caused these holes

in the wall of that bacterium,

and that bacterium will almost certainly go on now to rupture.

-So, they're not going to survive, really, are they?

-No.

That is quite a dramatic effect that you've shown me

that honey has on bacteria.

Do you know what is doing that?

Is there a kind of active ingredient in honey?

Many honeys, when you dilute them, there is

an enzyme in the honey that is produced by the bee.

And when you dilute the honey, it is activated

and it starts to break down glucose and produce hydrogen peroxide,

which in itself is an antiseptic.

Because that is what the bees use to turn the nectar into honey, isn't it?

Yes, that's right.

And I suspect that there are more bioactive ingredients

in honey that won't be discovered yet.

It may not be the cure for every bug, but the evidence is growing

that honey does have an impact on some bacteria.

But beware, the honey used is specially prepared for medical use,

so don't try this at home.

Bees don't just provide honey and pollinate our food,

they are also at the forefront of exciting new developments

in the world of medicine.

So when someone asks me, what have honeybees ever done for us?

I say, "Frankly, mate, how long have you got?"

Anyway...

Back to our hives.

On a hot day like this,

our bees are taking advantage of the fine weather, making

hundreds of trips back and forth, laden with nectar and pollen.

But this combination of a heavy work load

and high temperatures can put an added strain on their bodies.

So to show us exactly what is going on,

Adam has brought along his latest toy.

Now, you've got yourself another gadget here.

Yes, this is an infrared camera. This is showing the heat.

What is rather nice with this is

if you point it at the front of the hive, you can see how hot

the bees are when they're flying in and out of the hive.

So, blue is cold, obviously,

-yellow is warmer and red is very hot.

-Yeah.

And even going up to white, where they're particularly hot.

And you can see, the bees are these fantastic flight units.

You can see that middle part is absolutely roasting.

And that is where all of flight muscles are, powering them in.

And I guess the busier the bee is being, the greater red

or even white that thorax will be.

And all that heat is coming from energy burned.

That's why they need to get that nectar in.

-They need to fuel these flights.

-Yeah, that's expensive, isn't it?

When our bees fly,

their bodies reach temperatures of 45 degrees Centigrade.

And this uses an awful lot of energy.

So they burn more than half of the nectar

and pollen they bring back to the hives as fuel.

In the early morning or on a cold day,

they can use up even more energy.

So, for the survival of our bees and their colony,

they have to be as efficient as they possibly can.

Last time, we saw how flowers attract bees for pollination by using

electric fields.

We also revealed how they use ultraviolet light, which helps

the bees find the nectar and pollen more quickly and save energy.

In our garden this week,

Dr Heather Whitney is using thermal imaging to reveal how flowers

have evolved yet another incentive to attract the bees.

In the early morning, the flowers soak up the warmth from the rising

sun, and that helps some plants compete for the bees' attention.

These flowers are really warm

and the bees seem to really like them,

they are a very welcome resource for the bees.

But when it comes to warmth,

some flowers are more attractive than others.

If we look at a paler flower, such as this allium,

it is a lot cooler.

There is no central warmth, it is the same colour, temperature

as the ambient surroundings.

Darker flowers, on the other hand, absorb the sun's heat

much more effectively, as our thermal camera reveals.

And many flowers use their shape to retain heat, which is

a real bonus for our bees.

This flower, you really can see the fact that even though

the petals are pale, and are therefore quite cool,

the dark centre of the flower is actually really quite warm,

probably because the shape of the flower focuses the sun's warmth

into the centre

and then the dark colour retains that heat as well.

By channelling the heat into its centre,

the flower can provide an even more tempting treat for our bees -

lovely warm nectar.

The warmth of the nectar can actually offer the bee

an additional energetic reward as well, very much like us.

We prefer a nice warm cup of tea in a warm cafe on a cold day.

The bees, equally, will prefer to visit a warm flower with warm

nectar, particularly when it is a bit cool.

So the cunning plants have found a way of taking advantage of the bees

without them ever realising it.

But then again, who are we to criticise?

Human beings have been caring for and exporting honeybees

for thousands of years, longer than any other animal species.

And famous beekeepers have included Aristotle, Tolstoy, Maria Von Trapp

from The Sound Of Music, Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherlock Holmes.

Oh, and of course, Winnie The Pooh.

All right, I suppose technically Winnie The Pooh was a honey hunter,

not a beekeeper - he stole their food - but nevertheless, we have

been keeping bees

and harvesting their honey for thousands of years, creating

a wonderful and complex relationship between human beings and honeybees.

Buckfast Abbey has a great connection to bees

because this was the home apiary of Brother Adam,

the most famous beekeeping monk

in the world. For decades,

he spent here trying to breed

a sort of super bee that combined

the most desirable traits in bees -

gentle but productive.

Jonathan Swift said that hives furnished us

with two of the noblest things, which were sweetness and light.

There were two kinds of light -

there were animal tallow candles,

which would have been really stinky,

like being in a rancid kebab shop,

and then there were beautiful beeswax candles,

which had this lovely, sweet-scented, smokeless light,

which was the purity of Christianity.

Also the bees were seen as chaste,

because they couldn't work out how they reproduced.

And there was a good sort of sense of the strong morality of bees,

that they were industrious.

And there was this thought that if you behaved badly,

you'd be stung.

Sweetness is delight and it is also power and energy.

People didn't exactly domesticate bees,

they just managed to get the nests closer to home so that they could

tend the bees and collect the honey more conveniently.

A hive is really a container where bees can build their nest

and be sheltered.

Sort of like having a herd of 60,000 very, very small creatures.

This is an early form of hive.

Basically, it came with the Saxons, they think, in 500 AD.

People would collect swarms,

and they still collect swarms in these, actually.

Such a lovely shape, isn't it? The origin of the beehive hairdo.

Anyway, this was straw bound together with wicker

and has a nice sort of insulation.

So they were kept in these leashes, called bee bowls,

which basically sheltered the bees from the prevailing winds.

Somewhere like a monastery needed quite a lot of wax

and honey, and also for the mead.

There are wall paintings dating back thousands of years

showing that the ancient Egyptians actually kept bees.

They had cylindrical hives, horizontal hives.

And the cave paintings show them smoking the bees.

And then they pressed the honey out of the comb and put it in jars.

That is the very, very worst evidence we have of beekeeping.

Bees have been a symbol which has adapted

and reflected society from prehistory onwards.

So at each stage the traits that people admired in bees

reflected that society.

So the Romans admired the way that a bee would die

to protect its colony.

In the Enlightenment,

they were seen as rational creatures that worked together.

They were adopted as a symbol of communists,

people working together.

After the Second World War

and the experience of totalitarian regimes,

there was a slightly sinister edge for some people

in the way that they mass together and all follow a leader.

And now they have really become something of a symbol

for a disquiet about the environmental distress

and an almost apocalyptic vision of what's happening.

If the bees are disappearing, what is happening to the world?

So how we see bees today, again reflects our society's concerns.

And we are quite right to be concerned.

There is little doubt that honeybees are in trouble,

struggling to survive in the modern world.

This year looks as if it is going to be a good one for the bees,

in part because we have enjoyed such a fine, warm summer.

But I'm afraid that the bigger picture isn't quite so positive.

In Britain and central Europe, the number of bee colonies has

declined by one quarter in just 20 years.

So to find out why,

I've come to meet Professor Dave Goulson,

one of the leading researchers into the plight of bees

and other pollinating insects.

Dave, what are the problems?

The big one that's this historical driver has been

the loss of all the flowers, grasslands.

Generally, just not enough flowers.

People might be thinking, "OK, now I've got it sorted,

"it's the farmer's fault."

But I think we've got to be clear here, it is more likely our fault,

-because we have been demanding ever cheaper food.

-Yeah.

And this has been pushing our farmers to do things that they

-probably didn't want to do.

-Absolutely. Farming changed.

It really started to change in the Second World War.

We had the Dig For Victory campaign.

We needed to be self-sufficient back then.

Nobody really was worried about bees or butterflies

or anything else at that point in time, perhaps not surprisingly.

So we started this processing under way of intensifying

our farming, which carried on for 50 years.

And eventually, we realised that this was making a bit of a mess

of the countryside and almost every wildlife group was declining.

But then on top of that, we've really rather foolishly

redistributed bee diseases and parasites around the world.

So honeybees are being attacked by varroa mites from Asia

and wild bumblebees these days. Very many of them,

if you caught them here, are infected with an Asian gut disease,

which we accidentally brought in probably with honeybee hives,

no-one knows.

And then on top of that, they're exposed to insecticides.

Probably not enough to kill them outright, but imagine,

you're hungry, you've got an infection

and you're being mildly poisoned.

It's not surprising they're not looking so good sometimes.

That sounds like grim news.

But, you know, I remain optimistic.

Because we have got the figures, we know about the declines

in the meadows, we know what the insects require.

We can put it right if only we get on with it.

So, pesticides, imported diseases

and intensive farming are all contributing to the bees' decline.

And the uncomfortable truth is that these have one thing in common,

and that's us. So is there anything we can actually do to help?

Well, there might be. And it starts close to home.

I have been trying to do my own bit, in a small way, in my garden.

It is a very modest attempt. The area that we're looking at covers...

about an eighth the size of a tennis court, but every little counts.

So what I did was I stripped off the lawn,

because many of these species of plant can't compete

with the grass, and then I put in an annual mix.

So it was full of these, oxide daisies.

There were poppies, corn flowers, corn marigold, corn cockle...

Lots of arable weeds that we don't see out

in the countryside any longer.

This year, the perennials are coming through,

and this should hold its own, I'm told, for about seven years.

That's seven years of good nectar.

And look, it's alive - plenty of bees, bumblebees, flies

and hoverflies. Now, it is a start, but it is a small area.

If we will really want to improve things for our pollinators,

especially our bees, we have got to look at doing this on a much

broader scale out in the countryside.

On this arable farm just up the road from my house in Hampshire,

farmer Tom Coleman is planting wildflower strips to provide

nectar for honeybees and other pollinators.

It is a beautiful spread, Tom, and it is buzzing with bees,

butterflies, all sorts of pollinating insects.

Tell me about the history of this plot,

because it is not brand-new, it is not this year's, is it?

No. We've gone and planted this about three years ago.

It has got to be managed each year to really keep it in this condition.

It's critical that we actually cut it for hay annually,

-just to sort of stop these grass species taking over.

-OK.

Here is the big question.

-How much did it cost and who is paying?

-Um...

This is part of a government-funded agri-environment scheme,

so we do get paid.

If we look at it in a cold, financial light,

it just about breaks even for us. So, we're not making money on it.

But it is certainly helping us do what we'd like to do here.

I mean, this, in a way, is your modern monoculture - highly

efficient, necessary to feed us all at the right price, of course.

And then over here, you've got its conscience,

if I can be cruelly cynical about it,

because here we are catering to the wildlife,

and doing it, too, side-by-side, must be really reassuring.

Very much so.

From a farmer's point of view,

I get a real kick out of growing a high-yielding proper wheat,

but I also get probably even more of a kick out of producing

something like this.

We have seen tremendous benefits with the amount of wildlife

that we have seen. It has just been amazing.

Farmers don't always get praise where praise is due.

But if only every farmer followed Tom's lead,

then we'd have millions of acres of wildflowers providing food

for honeybees and all of those other essential pollinating insects.

In the meantime, what has been going on with our bees?

Well, back at the main hive, it has all been happening.

A few days ago, half the bees and the old queen upped and left,

meaning that the remaining bees have to work even harder to get

the colony back on track.

Since then, although the new queen has mated

and started laying thousands of eggs,

the new bees won't yet have emerged.

So how much honey have the workers actually managed to put on?

I'm just looking at your graph there.

It is quite subtle, but if you look at the extreme left-hand end of that

line and then the right hand, there is a definite increasing trend.

They are building up the volume of material inside the hive.

Yeah, they are building it up. Look how quickly the colony recovers.

That is bringing in more nectar

and pollen to fill up those empty spaces, and that is critical.

This colony now is just gagging for nectar.

It is just at the point where it needs to explode and really

take advantage of the nectar flow that is about to happen

so they can start piling it in in earnest,

and they can put on kilos in a day without any problem at all.

And in terms of this hive,

that could've come down to no more than lots of wildflowers

opening in a local hedgerow or maybe one of these fields,

the clover coming into bloom. Something as simple as that.

Sometimes just a single tree.

I've heard people talk about trees being an acre in the sky,

there are so many flowers on some of our flowering trees.

Weighing our hive has revealed something we never expected -

that even though half the bees swarmed a few days ago,

those left behind have already made up the shortfall

and they have nearly met their target.

So, in spite of the swarm earlier in the week, our hive,

with its new queen, is on course

to make enough honey to survive the winter.

We'll get the final figures at the end of the show,

but since our bees have been so wonderfully productive,

perhaps we can pilfer a little taste of their efforts.

We are indoors now for what is probably the best bit of beekeeping.

We've got lots of frames full of honey from our hives

down at the bottom of the field.

And what I'm going to do now is take off this first layer.

It is called uncapping. It is the layer of wax.

To reveal all that luscious honey

down below. And it is coming off very nice and easily.

These are great frames of honey.

I can't resist a little. Sorry, I'm going to take some of your crop.

-Straight from the comb.

-It's absolutely lovely.

-It's completely different, isn't it?

-Absolutely lovely. And of course,

the bees haven't just made all that honey,

they've also made all the wax that you're cutting off

and the wax combs that it is in.

What we'll do with these wax cappings is we'll put them

back in the hive and let the bees lick them clean, which they

will very much like to do, and then they've got all the beeswax

left over to make candles or floor polish. I've never done that.

You can see how beautifully clean that wax is.

This is very fresh honey. They've been foraging on this

since we've been here. This is part of the recent few weeks of work.

You can see how thick it is compared to the nectar that is coming in.

-They're really working it.

-I know.

-And that should be...

-Lovely.

-Perfect for extraction. There you go.

Thank you very much. Very simple technology.

We're just going to spin this around in this bucket

and it is going to spin out of the comb.

Wonderful.

I remember the very first time I did this,

it was so exciting to get honey from your own hives.

Yeah, it's great, isn't it?

A couple of geared wheels, a bucket, and we are getting honey.

There we go. You can see it all developing in the bottom there,

because it runs down the side.

Oh, look at that. I am going to have to have some as well.

This is beekeeper's perks.

Oh! That is fantastic.

For thousands of years, bees have given us so much, and they still do.

But now they need us more than ever.

It's time to show our appreciation and pay them back.

You can do something to help.

Log onto our website, take a look at that, because there are plenty

of ideas that would allow you to help the bees where you live.

And while you are on the website,

why not join in with the Great British Bee Count?

A very interesting bit of citizen science.

Now, I've got a little present for you. Some Hive Alive honey.

-Genuine honey from our hives.

-It is indeed, isn't it?

-Don't look at it to closely.

-It is full of bits.

It is full of bits, bees' legs.

So literally the bees' knees! Sorry about that.

It will add to the flavour, no doubt.

You brought the honey, I brought the cake.

All of this has honey in it.

And this is mead, which is distilled with honey, too.

-Drunk since medieval times.

-Indeed, indeed it is.

But before we tuck in... Adam, what is going on down at our hive?

The hives are doing brilliantly.

They have put on about six kilos over the last few days,

and that is increasing. I suspect that's because of that bramble

that is flowering down on the hedgerow.

They're really entering a nectar flow.

Lots more foragers needed, and that might be those white-marked

bees, I guess, because they are not yet out of the hive, are they?

No, they'll take a few days more, maybe even a week, to graduate

to those forager positions.

Then they'll be like the red-marked bees,

they'll be out there, bringing the nectar and pollen in.

Those red ones will be finished by then and the process will roll on.

Then the next bees will come through. The big conveyor belt of bees.

Before we finish, at the end of the summer then,

how much honey could we get out of one of those hives?

John reckons he's had nearly 50 kilos out of these hives before,

and that still leaves them enough to go over the winter.

You can see that cos they're stacked so high.

He has got super upon super upon super.

It is a great year for honey this year.

Anyway, what about your own red marks?

You had a bit of a sacrifice for the programme, didn't you?

It has not gone too badly. It was quite painful.

It is not something you want to do all the time. After an hour or so,

it has really faded down. And to be quite honest with you,

I don't think I'm going to feel that tomorrow.

-Such a stiff upper lip, I love that. Manly attitude.

-Absolutely.

And the perfect sting in the tail for our programmes,

programmes in which we have learned a lot for about these remarkable

insects and, I'm sure, increased everyone's appreciation of them.

So, can I propose a toast?

-To the honeybee.

-To the bees.

# You see buzz, buzz, buzz Goes the honeybee

# And tweedily, tweedily, twee Goes the bird

# But the sound of your little voice Darling

# That's the sweetest sound I've ever heard

# I say Buzz, buzz, buzz goes the honeybee

# While tweedily, tweedily, twee Goes the bird

# Buzz, buzz, buzz goes the honeybee

# But tweedily, tweedily, twee Goes the bird

# Let's go out into the clover now

# Here we are

# Up in Maine And the grass is growin'

# And buzz, buzz, buzz Goes the honeybee

# Tweedily, tweedily, twee Goes the bird

# Buzz, buzz, buzz Goes nature's honeybee

# While tweedily, tweedily, twee Goes the bird

# But I love your voice even more. #