Dr Margaret Couvillon and Professor Francis Ratnieks welcomed broadcaster Martha Kearney (centre) to the Laboratory of Apiculture & Social Insects (LASI), where she was filming for a BBC TV series on beekeeping.

A BBC broadcaster was on campus last week to film honey bees and to interview researchers in the Laboratory of Apiculture & Social Insects (LASI).

Martha Kearney, who is best known as the presenter of BBC Radio 4's ‘The World at One’ daily news programme, is also a keen amateur beekeeper and is making a TV series, ‘The Joy of Honey’, for BBC Four.

On Friday (5 July) she came to LASI to make videos of bee behaviour in observation hives and to interview Professor Francis Ratnieks and postdoctoral researcher Dr Margaret Couvillon.

Professor Ratnieks said: “The day was warm and sunny, so activity in the observation hives was perfect for video, with the worker bees making waggle dances and the queen laying eggs.

“In the middle of one interview one of the observation decided to swarm, which was great as this was one of the things they wanted to record and is normally very hard to observe."

BBC Four has commissioned ITN Productions to make ‘The Joy of Honey’, a four-part series appealing to the growing popularity of amateur beekeeping.

The series, due for broadcast in 2014, will introduce viewers to the pleasures and practicalities of beekeeping and explore the historical, cultural and environmental relationships between humans and bees.