The Backyard Bee Team on This Way Up

Meet our bee team for the first time, and This Way Up's bee mentor David Carleton visits Simon's place for a site inspection. Audio

We're setting up a bee hive next to the Funky Chicken Farm. The plan's to get that honey flowing while at the same time spreading the love and getting a bit of pollination happening in the 'hood. Audio

We recruit a swarm of 10,000 bees to join my back-yard bee hive. Audio

There's nowhere for the backyard bees to stay yet so we heat up some wax to build a hive for them. Audio

The big day when the bees arrive at my place. The hives are painted, we've waxed the plastic frames where the bees will start to build comb. For most new beekeepers this is how you'd get your first… Audio

Frank Lindsay, who's a commercial beekeeper, drops round with the swarm he's been looking after and gets me to open my hive and merge the two colonies. The reason for merging the two colonies is to… Audio

David Carleton and I are opening up the hive to check that our queen is alive and well and see how the bees are getting on with producing honey. Audio

The Backyard Bee team checks in with the hive before the Christmas break. I find out what my 50,000 bees will need over the holidays. Audio

The queen bee's gone AWOL and taken thousands of workers with her! I got back for a relaxing few weeks away and checked the hive, sadly there were hardly any bees and no fresh eggs or larvae. It looks… Audio

We're having some issues in the hive, getting through more queens than Henry VIII! But we do have a new queen and she’s laying a nice pattern. Audio

Rowan Jacobsen on colony collapse disorder. It's killing billions of the world's honeybees but nobody really knows why. Audio

Toxic honey's been in the news recently. The culprit's tutin, a toxin that gets produced when bees gather honeydew from the sap-sucking vine hopper insect on tutu bushes. So if you're a backyard… Audio

After recent disasters affecting the backyard bee team are we ever going to get any honey? Audio

We drop in on commercial beekeeper Frank Lindsay to see how honey gets extracted from the hive. Audio

Pro Maureen Maxwell pro shows me how to tell my mono-florals from my blends. She tastes honey for a living. Audio

Bee mentor David Carleton sorts out the hive for winter. Audio

The Backyard Bee Team goes into expansion mode. After a bumper honey harvest last year, bee mentor David Carleton helps us move in a new hive. Audio