Bees Bees See TV(C)

Ian Hillson

A buzzing sound at the Beeb.

From Trading as WDR:
“…The developers have set up a bee colony on the roof of TC1…”

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Bees 1

Mike Jordan

A change from having the 10.125k/cs then 15.625k/cs notch in all our hearings after being around monitors for years!

Incidentally what is the new version of this now we are supposed to have 4K and UHD whatever that is?

Ian Norman

Current HD is 1920 x 1080, double it to get UHD 3840 x 2160.  Almost 4K (4096 x 2160), but not quite.  So now we have two very nearly the same standards 4K and UHD.

Quote: Andrew S. Tanenbaum
“The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from. “

Chris Woolf

But I don’t think the developers know a lot about bees.

The little buzzers have eyesight shifted towards UV and that pink hive would pretty well invisible to them.

Bernie Newnham

They seem to work on position of the hive rather than anything else. If you move it more than a metre away from the place they learned they can’t find it.  If you want to move the hive – say to the other end of the garden – you have to lock them in and take them a couple of miles away first for a couple of weeks, then put them back in the new place.

On summer afternoons around 2.30 there are always hoards of new foragers hanging around the front of the hives doing orientation flights before setting off in their new role.

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Bees 2

Honey for sale! Just a few 2016 jars left.

Chris Woolf

That’s quite correct. But where you have hives close together, using different colours and also having different S/W/E orientation is usually reckoned to minimise the risk of bees getting muddled and trying to enter the wrong hive. Most continental bee houses, which have colony entrances side by side, use colour.

A friend of mine who used a city location for his bees was rather embarrassed when he tracked them one day, and found they were harvesting an excellent crop… from a broken jam jar outside Tesco.

Ian Hillson

"lock them in and take them a couple of miles away first for a couple of weeks, then put them back in the new place"Sounds just like working for the BBC Transmitter Dept in the bad old days.

Bernie Newnham

I have no idea where my bees go – it can be a couple of miles in any direction, apparently. The only time that you can really tell is when they come back with white backs in late summer. That’s when the Himalayan Balsam is in season.

A beekeeper friend got into a moral dilemma when some people asked her to help clear a stream near her house of the evil Himalayan interloper. Having said ok, it was only when they were dragging the stuff out that she said "Of course the bees love this stuff."

Albert Barber

Any Red ones?

Bernie Newnham

I hope that I currently have around 20,000 brown ones.  Always a worry in February / March that they’ve run out of food when the winter is mild.

Pat Heigham

I’m all for saving bees where we can.

The small estate I live on planted a border of wild flowers to attract them. Lavender, too, also Buddleia which butterflies love.

On several occasions I have discovered exhausted bumblebees on the grass outside my flat, barely able to crawl. So I put a drop of honey in front of them, and watched as the little tongues unrolled. After 10 mins or so they had enough energy to fly away. A bee refuelling station in Bookham!

Is it true that if you suffer multiple bee stings, you never get rheumatism?

Barry Bonner

When I was working on “Dixon of Dock Green” in the 1960s, Jack Warner was having bee sting treatment for his rheumatism. He said it was helping him a lot.

Bernie Newnham

I don’t know whether bee sting therapy would work, but all are welcome to come during the summer and wave their arms in front of the hives.

Nick Ware

Over a seven year period, I worked on an Anglia series called "Animal Country", presented by Desmond Morris and Sarah Kennedy.

One hot sunny location was in the grounds of a Norfolk country mansion owned by a lady called Wendy who had made a fortune flogging Wendyburgers. Among other things, she was an avid bee keeper, which is why we were there.

‘Production’ had had the foresight to order bee keeping outfits for us all. Unfortunately, the person tasked with hiring them got them from a costume hire company, and what turned up were tiny bright yellow and black striped bee costumes with wings and frilly skirts. The childish element amongst us (including me) thought it would be hilariously funny to put them on anyway, and so we did.

Needless to say, we all got stung, and whether the fact that I’ve never suffered from rheumatism proves anything, I leave you good folk to decide.

Tony Crake

In September 1983 I was wielding  a  ‘Panamic boom’ at full length on an OB Drama, "The Invisible Man". Mid take I observed out of the corner of my eye a large waspy thing walking down the Boom towards my right wrist.. it stopped and wriggled under the cuff… then reappeared and  stung me most forcibly… Someone then yelled "CUT" and I could stand easy and inspect the damage !  Not a sign.. but later that evening on the drive back down the M4 (from somewhere near Minehead) I began to feel quite quite unwell… and really only just made it home. Next day my right leg swelled up to gigantic size.. GP was perplexed (no change there) and eventually after a huge dose of strong penicillin it went down!  I seem to have pretty good joints for rising 74 though!

Attached pic shows Joe Driver with his Fishing Rod and Martin Mathieson on camera.
Also the Invisible Man himself who never spoke!

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Bees 3>

 

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