More Than Honey

My great-grandfather and my grandfather kept bees,

and my father had bees, too.

I wasn't that interested, I didn't like being stung.

But when my father got on in years, he said,

"if you don't start getting interested in the bees, I'll just sell them."

That really got to me. l thought,

"if my father and grandfather can put up with bee stings, so can I.

I'm no sissy!"

PLEASE COUNT ALONG!

The bee's flying.

Konstantin, we can switch the radar on now. I'm coming.

As we can see, the bee has decided to fly to its original feeding site.

It gets to a location

where there used to be a feeding place, but now it's gone.

The bee initiates a few search flights,

and flies around a bit.

But it doesn't fly back.

Instead, it makes a beeline east.

And east is the place where the dance told the bee to go.

Someone's there with a feeding site. And now it arrives.

OK, red 23 just landed,

and it's drinking.

And now it returns to the hive.

Not the way it has learned,

and not the way that was communicated in the dance.

It takes a route that it has somehow figured out by itself.

Now it's back at the hive.

We assume that even a brain as small as a bee's

is capable of imagining two outcomes,

and that bees can predict the results of their behaviour,

assess them and then plan:

"I've decided to do this and now I'll fly to that specific site."

The bees are doing fine here today.

Let me tell you, for them today is like Sunday.

No wonder their honey turns out almost translucent.

Pure nature, no pesticides, no poisons.

It'll definitely be wonderful honey.

I can't wait to have it on my plate.

Our native black bees are an old race

that acclimatized itself here centuries ago.

If I were to bring bees up here from the lowlands,

the colony would have problems surviving the winter.

The bees up here hibernate for more than half the year.

They've learned to acclimatize themselves over generations,

so that's why it works.

What have we got here?

You and your yellow bum have no business here. Scram!

Over there, beyond that mountain, someone else has bees.

No idea what race he has. But they fly all the way over here.

Mating takes place in mid-air.

Drones from other colonies, from other beekeepers,

all congregate together at the drone meeting area.

A queen mates with up to 10 drones,

so that's why there are these half-castes.

- What race is that? - Carnica.

It upsets me a little that the old native race is dwindling away.

Look, it has those yellow rings on its bum.

I had black bees for a long time, my father always did.

Why did you switch?

As we say in Bernese German: No more beekeeping with a ladder on my back.

- In other words, no hiving swarms. - No?

Of my 70 colonies, only three swarmed.

- I don't believe it! - Yes, that's all.

What's more, the Carnica hardly ever sting.

- They sting less than black bees? - Absolutely.

Sometimes I help people who have black bees.

If I had to go beekeeping with them, I'd quit.

- I couldn't work with 70 colonies. - Really?

I don't even have a veil.

I never wear one.

Wouldn't you like to switch over?

I think I'm too old for that.

- You're not that old. - But I am, I'm going downhill.

When I find that queen, I'm going to twist her little neck.

There she is.

You little two-timer.

That's what happens to those who seek pleasure elsewhere.

The queen lays an egg here in this honeycomb.

Three days later, a larva hatches from the egg.

It's the breeding stock

I want a new queen with the same genes as her mother.

The bees will raise queens from these re-deposited larvae.

They'll think it was a queen who laid them there.

Only the royal larva is fed, with royal jelly,

a secretion from the salivary glands of the bees.

And then the larva, which would normally become a worker bee,

turns into a queen.

Now I'm putting the frame with the larvae into the nurse colony,

and I hope I'll be getting 51 queens from this frame.

So, bees, behave.

You can see the queen beginning to move her legs.

She'll hatch in the next few hours.

Now I'm going to stick it onto the honey, here by the brood honeycomb,

so that the bees can get to it from the bottom.