For once the sun is shining when we visit the roof.
John gives us the lowdown on the life of a bee inside the hive. The season’s new workers are being produced and the brood nest is currently expanding. The class of April will spend their first five days on housekeeping duties, cleaning cells ready for new eggs to be laid. Then they’re promoted to other duties like guarding the hive and looking after the queen, and producing new wax which is used for building and repairing the comb. At the age of about 15 days, they will start to take training flights to learn where the hive is. Once they’ve mastered this the more experienced forager bees will instruct them (via the waggle dance) where to find pollen, nectar and water. Then they’ll be foragers until they die. Hopefully they’ll die on the wing, so the bodies don’t have to be taken out and disposed of. Most bees die away from the hive - they’re born surrounded by other bees, and they die alone. The bees born now might live a couple of months. In the summer they work so hard the life expectancy drops to 4 or 5 weeks.
This bee was in rude health, and made a smooth landing on Phil H's head in order to welcome him to the team.
Today the bees had all kinds of microphones pointed at them. First of all by Bert who used a solar panel to record the modulations of light interrupted by their beating wings as they crossed the hive threshold.
Then by Mark Aitken, who had been turned in to a bee and flew over from Borough High Street to find out about living conditions on the roof for his gardening show on Resonance FM.
On a more serious note, today John discovered that his staff pass doesn’t qualify him for reduced rates on cups of tea in the RFH cafe. Watch out Hilary, he’d like to have words.
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