Driving bees in Log Hives

[gavin]

That was a rather fine BBC2 Natural World programme on France the noo. One piece had Yves, the native dark bee enthusiast, and his traditional log hives somewhere in the deep south. To take queens of selected stocks away to a distant mating site (and essentially artificially swarm them) the process involved taking off the bit of slate on top, parking a ventilated travelling box on top, and whacking the sides of the log with sticks until the queen and quite a few workers moved up, presumably to get away from the din. Maybe that has lessons for us.

Here we go, about 43 min in. Just after the otter (no capybaras to be seen ... bit of an in joke for those who were here when we had one of our neonicotinoid 'discussions' ). Yves-Elie Laurent in the Cévennes seems to be the beekeeper.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b041z55p/Natural_World_20142015_France_The_Wild_Side/