All language subtitles for Queen of the Savannah BBC Natural World 2012 HDTV_Subtitles01.ENG

Beneath the starry skies
of the African savannah

is the perfect place
to begin our story.

A tiny queen is about
to commence her rule.

The army she'll command
will unleash terror...

..as she'll face foes
a million times her size.

She'll defend the most
precious stores of gold

against enemies that wield fire.

This drama will play out under
the mighty peak of Mount Kenya...

..and it will end in
the twisted forests in its shadow.

So how does a queen
of such tiny proportions

rule in a land made for giants?

The hot, dry plains are the stage
for the beginning of this tale

where, hidden deep inside
an ancient acacia tree,

a strange stirring is under way.

This is a wild nest
of African honeybees..

..and they are desperate
for a new queen.

The old queen has been dead
for 12 days.

If she's not replaced,
the colony will not survive.

Inside these enlarged cells,
their future has been forming.

Tonight, their destiny
will be decided.

The worker bees have
prepared five queen cells.

But there can only be
one ruler here.

The first jaws start to
slice through the wax cell

and a tongue savours the air.

This aspiring leader
can taste victory.

But in the next cell, a royal head
has already emerged.

Now two princesses have
the chance to be queen.

Which one will be triumphant?

It takes some minutes
for the two young sovereigns

to get their bearings in the nest.

As soon as they're ready,

their first task will be
to fight to the death.

The queens don't look much different
to the workers...

..but they have a pheromone
strong enough to command
every bee on the combs.

They'll use these pheromones
to seek each other out.

One of them is about to die.

One queen is dead.

Her adult life lasted barely an hour.

Her sister now rules victorious.

Mount Kenya commands
the climate here

and our queen bee is born into
the African plains in its shadow.

It's a harsh landscape.

To live here, the new queen honeybee

and her colony need all
their instincts and luck.

The weather is
everyone's greatest enemy.

Within a month,
the dry season will begin

and everything alive will suffer.

Those that can will move

and the bees can travel
huge distances.

But first they must build
strength for the journey,

whilst conditions are good.

The new queen does not
have time on her side.

GROWLING

But the tiny honeybee is not
the only queen on the plains.

The largest creatures on the
savannahs are also led by a female.

THEY TRUMPET

They're not afraid to throw
their weight around.

Elephants rule their land
with brute strength.

But even they can't fight
the extreme weather.

On the savannah,
their food will run out.

But if they can reach them,

the mountain forests could
also provide a refuge.

The tiny honeybee
and the giant elephant

are such different creatures,

but they're driven
by the same forces

and their paths will cross.

The new queen honeybee has fought
her sister and won her crown,

but the other queen cells need
dealing with before they hatch.

Dispatched with a sting.

The queen is the only bee to have
a sting that can be used repeatedly.

Its sole purpose
is to kill her sisters.

The housekeeper bees toss out the
bodies of the young they nurtured.

They are now obsessed
with their one true queen.

There is no doubt over
her absolute rule.

And now the pressure is on.

Her colony needs to
grow big and strong

so when the time comes,
they can survive the long journey.

They can't afford any interruptions.

THUDDING FOOTSTEPS

The elephants are coming closer...

..led by their powerful matriarch.

She wasn't born into her title.
She earned it.

She's 60 years old
and it's her incredible memory

that leads the elephants through
the difficult landscape to find food.

The matriarch guides them
to the best pickings.

Her family rely on her judgment.

They must eat as much as they can
whilst times are still good.

And the elephants will stop
at nothing to reach

the most nutritious leaves of acacia.

But their habit of knocking over
acacia trees could prove fatal

for the queen honeybee,
as her home is deep inside one.

The matriarch leads the elephants
closer to the queen's tree.

How will the bees cope with
the power of the mighty elephant?

But guard honeybees are programmed
to die in defence of their leader.

Even against an enemy
of such epic proportions.

They might have skins
tougher than leather,

but tender ears and trunks
are their weak points.

SHE TRUMPETS

And their babies are vulnerable.

The bees return triumphant.

Seeing off the thunderous elephant is
no big deal for the queen's warriors.

The queen herself
was never in any danger.

The bees are the true rulers
of the plains.

Their mission to grow strong
is unhindered...this time.

Deep inside the nest,

the young bees are tending
their stores of honey and pollen.

Unlike the elephant matriarch,

the queen bee doesn't interfere with
the day-to-day running of the hive.

The workers have it all
under control.

It's only the very oldest bees
that are sent out to forage.

It's the hardest job in the colony.

They navigate using the sun

and fly up to three miles
from the nest to find flowers.

The travel is so hard
on their bodies,

they only last a few weeks
before they die of exhaustion.

In this,
the height of the good season,

the bees work every daylight hour.

The forager bee must visit
2,000 flowers per day.

But she can't carry that much
pollen all at once.

So she'll touch down upon
a hundred flowers

before carrying the precious cargo
back to the nest.

Heavy with either pollen or nectar,

the foragers drop off their load
with the housekeeper bees.

The successful foragers show
others where to find the flowers

using the waggle dance.

Each shake and turn explains
detailed distance and direction.

The bees forage with efficiency.

As 10,000 workers are out
gathering nectar at any one time,

the queen's honey store is growing
at a tremendous rate.

The bees are on track.

Being out in the open alone
is vulnerable,

as the foragers don't have the
strength of the army to back them up.

But they have no choice...

..even when their nemesis
is in the air.

The bee-eater.

These foragers have nearly
completed their life's work

but they're not expendable.

They've got to make it back.

The bee-eater is the most
aerobatic bird in the skies.

It's a skirmish.

Once the bee-eater knows
the location of the nest,

it'll never leave it.

A constant thorn in
the honeybees' side.

The queen must replace
these fallen soldiers with urgency.

They feed the whole colony.

If the supply line is shut down,
it will collapse within days.

But as she matures, she's reaching
her egg-laying prime.

Her body is out of her control.

She lays almost an egg a second.

Every day, thousands of worker bees
are hatching.

Throughout the day and night,

they chew the wax caps
off their cells...

..and struggle free.

For the first time they can
see, feel and smell the other bees.

They're instantly bound to the nest
by the queen's pheromones.

Their life of hard labour begins.

Their first job is to clean
and house-keep.

Then, at three days old, a special
gland inside their head develops.

It produces royal jelly, the most
magical substance in the hive.

The queen is fed on royal jelly.

It's the key to her power.

And it's what enables the nest to
replenish itself by the thousand.

The queen might be laying
all the eggs,

but it's the nursemaid workers
that feed them.

All newborn larvae
are given a dose of royal jelly

and then are fed on honey and pollen.

Each baby is fed 2,000 times
by the nursemaids...

..who even control the temperature
for the young.

They need to be
at a constant 35 degrees.

Outside on the savannah, it feels
like someone has turned up the heat.

Soon the cool forests of
Mount Kenya will be calling.

This old matriarch
has made the journey there

every year since she was born.

She knows the way and can lead
her family with confidence.

But the bees' life cycle is so short,

not one of them alive today
has made the journey before.

To get the queen there safely
will be down to instinct alone.

The foragers have done their job well

and their wealth has grown to
over 20 kilos of golden honey.

They'll easily be strong enough
for their migration.

For the bees, this hoard is the
difference between life and death.

But their stash of riches needs all
the power of the army to defend it...

..as there is a price for creating
the sweetest natural substance
on the savannah.

There are some
that intend to steal it.

The queen has one enemy
that her workers can't handle.

He's coming.

A Turkana tribesman,
born and raised in wild country.

The bright flash of a bee-eater
gives the colony away.

He hunts down their nest.

The honey hunter's secret weapon.

Wood from the Ereng bush.

It burns to make a smoke
that drugs the bees.

They don't stand a chance.

The odd sting doesn't stop him.

Months of work...stolen.

It's carnage.

The queen has survived

but her home is destroyed.

Her chances of making it are slim.

Dripping honey
will attract scavengers

and the bees' defences are down.

They must get out of the tree.

The bees know what to do.

They gather themselves...

..and prepare to swarm.

The bees must protect the queen
at all costs.

But she can't fly far.

Her belly is too heavy with eggs.

As soon as they can,
the swarm settles.

And the queen is safe, hidden
within the cluster...for now.

The bees will need a lot of luck
to get out of this one,

but luck is not on their side.

A strong wind from the east
sucks the moisture from the land.

The dry season has arrived.

It's touch and go whether the bees
can keep their queen alive.

Everyone is at the mercy
of the burning sun.

The river has stopped flowing.

And elephants need to move.

GROWLING

The matriarch knows it's time to go.

She's responsible for the
decision-making for her whole family.

She's done the journey
so many times...

..but each year it gets harder.

In her 60 years,
the world has changed.

This is modern Africa

and her journey is no longer
straightforward.

Dangerous roads cut up the landscape

and people are impossible to avoid.

But she can't risk starvation
for her family.

They'll have to run the gauntlet.

TRAFFIC ROARS

The bees have survived the night
but it's dangerous out in the open.

They're vagrant and vulnerable...

..and the bee-eater has found them.

Their plans for migration
have been thwarted.

Immediate survival
is their only concern.

They need to find a new home
within easy reach.

Scouts are sent out.

Not all will return.

The bees are so desperate
they'll look anywhere.

A scout bee finds an empty box.

It's clean and a good size
but it's man-made.

Getting involved with people
could be a mistake,

but they're running out of options.

She makes it back to the cluster...

..and tells them the distance,

and even the quality
of what she found,

using the twists and turns
of the waggle dance.

Will the queen accept it?

She'd be wise, as the box
is on the edge of a small farm,

full of flowering crops.

A welcome oasis
in the arid landscape.

As one, the bees decide.

They form a cluster
next to their new home...

..and descend into the hive.

The queen enters
and completes the deal.

They're safe.

But they've arrived with nothing

and have a huge amount of work
to rebuild their lives.

There's a farmer here
that's pleased to see them.

Peter Ekerri's farm is special.

It's the only one in the area
to have irrigation.

So there's water here,
despite the dry season.

It's a lifeline for the queen.

It's up to the workers now
to put her back on track.

She can't lay any eggs
until they've built new combs

and there's nowhere
to store provisions.

So every bee starts to excrete wax

and turns its hand to building.

They're fast workers
and build a comb a day...

..until the food gathering
can begin in earnest.

Then even the young bees
are sent foraging.

Some bring back nectar
to make honey,

others, pollen on their back legs
to feed to the young larvae.

There are so many flowers
that within just a week,

the queen once again
has an empire to rule over.

And Peter's crops are pollinated.

A perfect partnership.

The bees chose Peter's farm well.

The irrigation
meets all their needs...

..and they're closer to Mount Kenya.

If they can get strong enough
before Peter's crops are finished,

they'll be able to continue
their journey to the forest.

But the queen and her colony
aren't alone.

Peter keeps over a hundred hives
around his farm,

waiting for them to be filled
with migrating swarms.

But he's not a honey merchant.

Peter has wired his hives together,
each one connected.

If one is knocked, the whole row will
swing, and the bees will go wild.

Out in the bush,
the elephants are searching for food.

The dry season pushes them closer
to the villages.

They won't hesitate to steal
Peter's vegetables.

The matriarch has passed
this way before.

She knows how to find them.

Last year the elephants
ate everything...

..and his family went hungry.

But this year the beehive fence
runs right around his farm.

Will it keep the elephants
out of his crops?

Night falls
and Peter sleeps fitfully.

Small antelope
sneak under the beehive fence.

The bees aren't sleeping.

They build and house-keep
throughout the night.

Other nocturnal creatures
tiptoe through the fields.

An aardvark creeps quietly...

..and a scrub hare
finds plenty to eat.

RUSTLING AND GROWLING

The elephants sniff the air.

They're completely blind
in the pitch black.

They smell the crops...

..but they can also smell
the queen and her colony.

It stops them in their tracks.

Around Peter's farm,
there are more bees in one place

than they've ever encountered before.

TRUMPETING

TRUMPETING

TRUMPETING

The matriarch knows better
than to disturb the bees.

She leads the herd away.

Not even a feast of vegetables
could tempt them past.

The honeybees have done
their job well

and Peter doesn't need to share
his harvest this year.

But soon the harvest is over

and there is nothing more
for the bees to eat here.

The cool forests
of the high ground are calling.

Dewy mornings and delicate flowers
are waiting for them.

This time, the bees can leave
in a more organised fashion.

They have time to plan.

The queen is starved in preparation
for the long flight

and they begin to eat
their stores of honey.

The elephants have a head start.

They have survived the main road

and are already on their way
across country.

They're getting closer
to the mountain.

Peter's hive has gone quiet.

He would have liked the honey...

..but the bees have done their job
and taken their leave.

They're finally on their way
to their new home.

African honeybees
are expert migrators.

Nothing can stop them now.

It's 20 miles away...

..over farmland and wild country.

The forests are made of
black olive and cedar trees.

There's plenty of shelter
to be found.

Their new home is high and safe.

Combs are built...

..and as fast as
they're constructed,

foragers are sent out
to the forest clearings.

Every dawn
a carpet of purple flowers opens.

Nectar is gathered.

Life is good and peaceful.

They've made it.

But how long can the harmony last?

The elephants are here, too.

The old matriarch
has pulled her family through.

But their stay here
will only be brief.

When the rains return to the plains,
she'll guide them back again...

..leading them all, old and young.

TRUMPETING

When the time comes, the bees ought
to take their queen back too.

But she's not herself.

The colony has picked up a disease
on their journey.

The queen is badly affected.

A louse steals the food
from her mouth...

..and she's stopped laying eggs.

Her workers sense
her power weakening.

Without her strong pheromones
of fertility...

..the bees start to feed larvae
extra royal jelly.

They're preparing more queens.

The old queen has come so far...

..but now she's useless
to her colony.

They need a new slave
to lay their eggs.

It's the worker bees
who are in charge now.

When the new queen hatches,

our queen that has travelled so far
and survived so much, will be killed.

After 12 days, a set of jaws begins
to slice through the wax cell...

..and a new era dawns.

The African queen's fairytale is over

but the story of honeybees reaches
all the corners of the world,

including our very own British Isles.

African honeybees and our British
honeybees are the same species.

They look almost identical but
they have very different lifestyles.

Like the African bees,
our British bees used to live wild

and nest in hollow trees.

Our woodlands were once buzzing.

But 20 years ago, our British bees
became extinct in the wild.

The only ones left
are living in hives.

In the countryside, even these
hive bees are on the decline.

But the good news is
they're now thriving in our cities.

One man is set on finding out

what's attracting these
city slicker bees to the metropolis.

Look at that!
100 million years of evolution

and now they're thriving
on top of a building

in one of the most
advanced civilisations
right here in central London.

So how can they be doing so well

in this seemingly endless
concrete jungle?

I'm George McGavin
and I'm an entomologist.

I want to find out
exactly what our cities have got

that's so good for honeybees.

I'm standing behind
King's Cross station

which is about as inner
city as you can get,

but it's where British honeybees
are receiving the very finest care.

This is an urban beekeepers
training centre,

where 40 people every week
are learning to keep beehives
in their city gardens.

50,000 kilograms of honey
is being produced in London.

And approximately 4 billion bees
are working their socks off.

So what's driving the beekeepers?

Is it just the latest eco-fashion?

I spoke to Phil Paolo from Camley
Street Nature Reserve to find out.

So is this revolution in urban
beekeeping just a passing phase?

No, there's an awful lot
of interest, particularly
in London, in keeping bees.

A lot of the people that
are taking up beekeeping,

it isn't just as a hobby.

I think a lot of people realise
honeybees are under threat

so they want to do their thing
to keep the populations going.

How many individuals actually
keep bees in this area?

Well, it seems to be
growing every day.

Within the M25, there's 5,000
beekeepers keeping colonies.

So it's more than simply a fad?
I wouldn't say it's a fad at all.

Over the last couple of years, the
honeybee has had a really hard time

with the decline of a lot of
the colonies,

so a lot of the beekeepers that
are learning new skills here
are the real heroes.

They're helping to spread good
practice and spread the word
of beekeeping across London.

It's hard not to know about
the decline in honeybees.

They've made a lot of headlines.

So why are our bees
falling out of the sky?

What's the reason for this
out-of-control decline?

Our British countryside
is still a stunning place,

but it's no longer buzzing
for our honeybees.

Bees are plagued by
the blood-sucking varroa mite,

accidentally imported from Asia.

Without treatment,
the bees can't survive.

As our farming
becomes more intensive,

there's not enough wild flowers and
crops are treated with insecticides.

It's fast becoming
a no-go area for bees.

But even so, how can the concrete
city be better than the countryside?

To find out, we need to look at
what a bee needs to survive.

Well, it's quite simple.
Bees need food and plenty of it.

Up here on the rooftops,
I can't see any flowers,

but bees can forage
up to three miles.

From here, they could reach
thousands of urban gardens.

Even window boxes
are a lifeline to bees.

We love our gardens and we like them
to be bright and colourful

for as long as possible,

so we plant flowers that last
from early spring to late autumn.

It's brilliant for bees.

A worker bee has to visit
an astonishing 1,500 flowers

to make just one drop of honey.

A single jar of honey is equivalent
to 10 million foraging trips.

That's a serious number
of flowers to visit.

The bees turn all this nectar
into lovely honey,

but the honey is just a bonus.

Their real job
is much more important

and this makes
the urban beekeepers' work essential
for the wellbeing of all of us.

The majority of our British
fruits and vegetables

are dependent
on pollinating insects.

If you like your five a day,
you need to like bees too.

Without pollinating insects,
it would be possible to do the job
of pollination by the human hand.

All you have to do is transfer
pollen from one flower to the other.

It would be very tedious

and to do all the flowers
in the UK would cost £1.5 billion,

that's if you could find anybody
who wanted to do it.

That would push the price of
strawberries up quite a bit.

Insects do it for free.

All we have to do
is look after them.

It's so important to the economy
that the Government

is now looking to make our cities
pollinator reserves,

so the bees can be exported
back out into the countryside.

New beekeepers are encouraged to
have training to help control mites

and other pests and diseases.

Here in London,
they're leading the way.

The British Beekeepers Association
membership

has doubled in the last three years
to 20,000.

So the trendy urban beekeepers
really are making a difference

and the honeybee could be safe
in our cities at least,

but there's a lot more
that still needs to be done.

It's not just the honeybee
that needs looking after.

As well as honeybees, we also have
over 250 other species of bees...

..not forgetting the butterflies,
moths and flies.

Collectively,
our gardens cover a larger area

than all the national
nature reserves in the UK.

And we can make them
really pollinator-friendly,

one giant wildlife haven.

So it's really up to us to look
after our pollinating insects.

It's so important. We're the only
ones who can stop their decline.

We can do it. We have to do it.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd