Filming the bees

Kryzstof the bee man came on his usual weekly visit to check the hives, but accompanied this time by two MA students who are making a film about the relationship between man and bees. They had to wear all the bee protection, as they got very close to the hives to record them.

Getting ready to film 

Grainy picture taken from far away - I'm not getting in too close

Photo of Old Copse hives from Kriss's Instagram account

Kriss inspecting the bees - from Kriss's Instagram account

As ever, Kryzstof wonders what food sources bees find in the wood.  They are clearly finding a lot, but it's not obvious what. The trick is to look up. At this time of the year all the activity is happening on the tree tops, where they are in full sunlight. For example, the wild cherry are blossoming like crazy - but the flowers are hard to see, and even more difficult to photograph on a phone - but the bees love them.

There's some cherry blossom way up there

And of course the wood is full of catkins for the bees to collect pollen from to feed the developing brood. The birch flowers early. The flowering season lasts for several weeks, as the tops of the trees flower first, and the branches in shade bloom a lot later. While birch catkins are full of pollen, they don't provide any nectar, which the bees need to give them the energy to fly.  But as I learned here willow catkins provide both pollen and nectar, which explains why there is so much bee activity in the willows.

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Birch catkins on the ride

The other thing I learned was that the word catkin comes from the old Dutch kat-e-ken, which means 'kitten'.