The Wonder of Bees with Martha Kearney
Series which follows Martha Kearney's bee-keeping year and explores the science, art and culture of the honeybee, the most ingenious insect known to humankind.
0 of 4 episodes
0% doneMartha Kearney's year gets off to a bad start when unseasonal snow in spring threatens to kill the bee colonies she keeps in her garden in Suffolk. With help from a master beekeeper Martha feeds her bees and takes one of the hives to a wildflower meadow at a neighbour's house along with two brand new hives.
Martha discovers a bee with deformed wing virus in one of the hives she has set up on a Suffolk wildflower meadow. With the help of a master beekeeper, she treats the hive for verroa mite.
Spring has well and truly sprung and the hives are going from strength to strength, but that brings with it a problem of its own - the swarm. As the colonies become overcrowded, the bees become likely to depart in a swarm with the queen, leaving just a few behind to rear a new queen. It's a natural process, but for the beekeeper it can be a disaster, leaving the hive all but empty with little prospect of a harvest of honey.
Martha enjoys the English countryside at its best, offers her honey to the public at a village fair and finally succeeds in harvesting the true wildflower honey she set out to achieve.
