Bees<\/a> has a theme (other than \u201cbees\u201d), it\u2019s that companionship can thrive in the least likely places. The least likely place in this instance being a small patch of urban Bristol, where the spring and summer of 2020 found Dohrn directing his expertly modified bumble-cams at the 60+ species of bee that frequented his back garden. We meet the wool carder bee, with its bald back and ferocious aerial combat skills; the ashy mining bee, with its exhausted waddle and washed-out pelt, like a bumblebee that\u2019s spent the last four decades grumbling about the ex-missus on a bench outside Ladbrokes; and the red-tailed mason bee, which builds its nest in an empty snail shell before topping it with a hipsterish dried-grass wigwam. I imagine a lightly pyjama\u2019ed Kevin McCloud, watching at home, permitting himself a nod of admiration.<\/p>\nThey\u2019re all here, bumbling through the hazy Bristol sunshine while Dohrn, face scrunched up as he watches through his state-of-the-art magnifying lens, says things like \u201cwow\u201d, \u201cyes\u201d and \u201coh man, will you look at that!\u201d.<\/p>\n
Bees live in \u201ca completely different dimension\u201d, he says. Et voil\u00e0, a \u201ctime-stretching\u201d approach to film-making that results in gasp-inducing detail and a soundtrack pitched somewhere between a bustling heliport and a distant conversation between drunken lawnmowers.<\/p>\n
There is something pleasantly bee-like about Dohrn\u2019s award-winning film, too. A leisurely thing, it drifts woozily around the photographer\u2019s garden, picking up facts here and there and storing them like pollen in little pouches on the backs of its thighs. Not too many facts, mind. This is no place for statistics or percentages. The photographer\u2019s narrative bag is an altogether looser affair, with as many shrugs and ellipses as there are firm specifics on, say, the climate crisis: \u201cAll over the world, bees are declining\u201d is all we get on the doom-boffin front. Consequently, Dohrn \u2013 an affable, wistful sort who wears a range of crumpled action-shorts and calls us \u201cmate\u201d \u2013 often appears as awestruck and bewildered by his hairy quarry as we do.<\/p>\n
Enter an industrious leafcutter bee called Nicky. Dohrn is smitten. He leans towards her nest, nose filling the screen like a nostrilly Jupiter. They bond. \u201cI could tell she was looking at me. Does she know these are my eyes?\u201d he asks, pointing at his eyes. \u201cScientists have shown that honeybees can recognise individual people, so why wouldn\u2019t she?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I had no idea I was going to get so involved\u2019 \u2026 Dohrn with Nicky the leafcutter bee. Photograph: BBC\/Martin Dohrn\/Passion Planet<\/p>\n
Oh, the unbearable lightness of bee-ing! While we ponder the imponderables, the film-maker shows us around Bee City, the remarkable \u201cmulticultural\u201d metropolis he has assembled out of wildflowers and bits of wood in response to his garden\u2019s shortage of be(e)fitting accommodation. Here are the starter homes and perfumed A-roads, along which teenage bees wrestle while the hairy-footed flower bee waddles past obliviously with her shopping. There is the tower block occupied by teeny scissor bees and the capsule hotel from which rows of male mason bees peer, like businessmen assessing the weather.<\/p>\n
Here, essentially, is life in microcosm; the subtext, as with all modern wildlife documentaries, being, \u201cLet\u2019s not cock it up entirely, eh?\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyway, here comes Nicky again. Poor Nicky. After building four nests in quick succession, the knackered single mum throws in the towel and, in the dying days of summer, simply flies off into the heavens.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no idea I was going to get so involved,\u201d says Dohrn, peering disconsolately into the deserted apartment that was once his friend\u2019s home. He sighs. His lockdown project has, he says, \u201cchanged my view of bees\u201d. A wistful smile. \u201cIt\u2019s changed my view of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
My Garden of a Thousand Bees aired on BBC Four and is on iPlayer now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin Dohrn likes bees. Big bees, small bees, angry bees, randy bees, bees with voluminous ruffs and calves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-358056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}