My Garden of a Thousand Bees

I am married to a bee-fetishist*, he is also an insect-botherer and a garden-stealer . During the last eighteen months (the Lockdown project) he has been indulging all of these passions by stealing my garden to make a film about all the bees and other insects that live there. PBS are streaming the movie which is titled 'My Garden of a Thousand Bees' 

 obviously it should've been 'Lulu's Garden of a Thousand Bees' but apart from that error I have to admit the film is perfectly decent and, judging by the comments on PBS's site, so do quite a lot of other people.

This blog started with an account of filming insects in France, anyone new here and wanting more hymenoptric content could check out some early posts

I just revisited this post  and only now realise that the garden theft started in earnest 11 years ago

This post  about a disastrous attempt to film a bee hive   is from 2009

 

*he refuses to take my surname so we have to call him Martin Dohrn, he's worried that if he becomes Martin Labonne people will think that he's related to Duran Duran

 

 

image credit: Jack - Thank you Jack

It's going to hit minus twenty five degrees in Ulaanbaatar

Mongolia. The Man has travelled one thousand and a bit miles beyond Ulaanbaatar which I guess means one thousand and a bit miles even colder. He has been looking for snow leopards and for the last two months he has remained unshowered, unshaven and layered like a Baklava in silk thermals and camel thermals and woolies and fur-lined boots all topped with a long Mongolian Man's Coat with a special-sash-that-you-have-to-wear-with-these-coats-or-it's-Bad-Luck.


Once a week there was an underwater satellite call during which I could just about grasp that he's walking really far and up lots of hills carrying really heavy things and he tells me facts like every Mongolian he has spoken to has admitted to inadvertently licking a metal thing in this fierce cold and needing help to get separated, also Goat Fat Stew is delicious and alcohol made with fermented mare's milk is 'quite nice but tastes like goat'.

The Man reckons that the walking and the weight of the kit and the weight of the clothes combined are reducing his body weight but he can't tell because in all these weeks he has never unwrapped those layers. That's two months without a shower - and I get to welcome the smelly hairy marvel home tomorrow night.

In other news
a film about ants and Sir David Attenborough will air on the BBC on 8th December Xmas -ish - look out for it if you can, I shall probably mention this again. 

Poopy and Sweary

Tarpaulins and pallets have accumulated under the tree opposite my house - also a few pieces of scavenged women's clothing set out with a brown paper 'For Sale' notice, My sinking heart recalled a rooftop squat in the next street from a few years back and I realised that my new neighbour is my old neighbour - Cheesey 


We are three weeks into Cheesey's tree occupation, he's still buttonholing any passersby and now has an assortment of brothers-in-arms who gather to bicker about who owns the bike they just nicked or whether setting the pallets on fire was a stupid move -the tree looks a bit fed up.

The accumulation of Cheesey's sweary vocabulary and other people yelling at him from their windows to Shut the F*** up, has made things very sweary indeed. Cheesey came to my gate last week so he could call me a F****** B**** in close-up, and then, when he thought he was invisible, he came into the front yard to take a series of photos on his smartphone (???!!), surprised that I noticed he shouted at me that it was all part of his 'environmental campaign'.

But I got a break from all that 

last week I was in Switzerland with my chum Mr Attenborough - chauffering him around foresty filming locations - there was chitchat - I told him about Cheesey and we both agreed that the story bore more than a passing resemblance to Alan Bennett's tale of The Lady in The Van and that I'd better watch out.

In other news 

Mrs Blackbird is back. She flies into the kitchen as soon as I  open the garden door, having picked up this habit last year -  despite my putting food outside to keep her out, she still likes to come in, perch on the furniture and poop on the floor - today she brought her children in, which was a whole lot more poopy

Extra Extra
In yet another (probably doomed) bid to get the hang of social media I've made an Instagram account - there's probably a widget that I should stick on the side bar but meanwhile here's a link

The man is on his way home

the man is on his way home

the man is on his way home


from switzerland where he has been visiting these exact same ants


An Irish Sisterhood Practise their Defence Skills from Ammonite Films on Vimeo.

in other news

last year I wrote a post about the man going out to film a woman and her dogs who'd discovered bioluminescent worms in their french garden

the bioluminescence film is now ready and can be seen on english television on monday - here's a clip  http://bbc.in/1Oecrz0

Snapshots From The Last 7 Days: Catalonia

Driving from Santander to Barcelona was easy enough, but once in Catalonia things got a bit confusing. The Catalan people have their own language and like to name/number their roads or not as they see fit, I spent 4 hours being lost in the spaghetti knots of roads around Barcelona trying to find my way to where the crew were working.

There are currently a series of unofficial referendums being held around the Catalonian towns and villages to try and get support for independence


In Barcelona I handed over the van to the cameramen so they could drive the kit home. The Director and I then took off for a few days on the rocky Catalonian peninsula of Cadaqués.


The centre of Cadaqués is maze of crazy-paved and cobbled streets which will become dead ends or steps or simply a rugged sort of rocky riverbed, quite a lot of streets are unnamed and most houses don’t have numbers

I had a go at making a map of Cadaqués


I had booked an apartment on Picasso Street, the landlady emailed me to say that there was no house number but I should call when we arrived and she would take us there. We wound our way down around the mountains and parked the car in what seemed to be roughly the right bit of town, suddenly before us we saw Picassso Street and felt triumphant, I called the landlady:

Me: Hola – Isabel, we’re here - at the end of Picasso Street
Isabel: Which Picasso Street?
Me: It has a furniture shop at the end where I am
Isabel: No you’re at the wrong Picasso Street, you need the short one.


Isabel came to our rescue riding this moped

Spanish Antics

We accomplished our mission to find out what the Argentine ants are up to in Spain by virtue of running a camera continuously while Whiplash and I bombarded the Spanish ant scientist with questions. It was a bit like when they send children out to interview celebrities. Among other things we established that;

a) The Argentine ants in Spain are indeed part of a global supercolony*

b) Human activity makes exactly the right conditions for invasive species

c) The ant scientist's favourite colour is yellow and he often has a croissant for breakfast

Our work done, Whiplash and I retired to Cadaqués, a ridiculously picturesque seaside town close to the French border. Salvador Dali made his home there, and it is impossible to turn a corner without seeing his famously mustachioed face. We visited Dali’s very theatrical house which is stuffed with all sorts of things; bottoms, bosoms, mirrors, taxidermied swans, the odd bear and a boss-eyed owl.












I had completely misunderstood the importance of the holy toast (see last post). Too late I realised that, rather than eat it, I should have hung it medallion-like around my neck to ward off the series of temptations placed in my path by Whiplash. I shall not go into detail (I have many episodes on film and plan to start up a sideline business). Hauling the bottles up the hill to the apartment was great for our lungs and biceps but the positive effects might be outweighed by the fact that I’ve started smoking again. I’ve also come home with ‘prickly heat’ – at least I think that’s what the rash is, either that or I’ve picked up something from the daily foam party.

Pop-tastic video courtesy of Whiplash on her mobile phone




*most species of ants make a nest that works like a self-contained state, when they meet ants from another nest, whether of their own species or different one they behave aggressively and often kill each other. Ants of the same species that have formed multiple nests and act in a friendly way towards each other become a supercolony - a sort of federation, they will all be related to each other. Usually a supercolony extends over a few metres or even kilometres of land area, the Argentine Ants have formed a supercolony that extends across continents

Girls On Film

Crumbs! – I thought I had sorted out a lazy escape for Miss Whiplash and myself - but it looks like we’re going to have to work for it after all.

We have some euros left over from a previous production that need using up - but they must be used for filming business. With my customary brilliance I suggested that we do a recce for the next leg of ant filming which will be in Spain.

What I meant was, that we could try out some hotels and restaurants to see which would be the best for the film crew to use, but the producer has just emailed me several detailed pages of instructions about the things he wants finding out, here are a few of the issues to be explored:

… film the ant colonies to give us an idea of size and density, have Whiplash stand in for scale in some shots … need to know the activity of the ants – when do they first get going in the morning … perhaps this depends on light hitting their nests … When do they stop … what will the weather be like when we plan to film … how will the weather then affect ant behaviour … video some ants fighting to give us an idea of what happens … would be good to get an idea of the day-to-day activity of the ants … What other species of ants are nearby … interview ant scientist to give us an idea of what he is like on camera

Despite this setback I'm still looking forward to it, if I can get Whiplash's tag off we're going next week.

Pests

15th May
I might not be squeamish about insects but I still find them a bit of a nuisance, around here it is the season for nuptial flights, when freshly hatched ants are supposed to fly off and start new colonies. The walls of The Lovely House are made from mud bricks and lots of ants seem to be living in there, at the moment our wooden window sills are covered in earth as millions of ants emerge from underneath the windows inside the house, they fly around hopelessly, then drop down dead as they fail to find a suitable mating spot.

Our response is to spend most of the time outdoors, I’ve failed to stem the mouse population so it's more hygienic and it’s warmer outside anyway*. I cook supper on a fire under the lime tree - this is quite an owly neighbourhood too, which is nice.


All this ‘Live and let Live’ stuff is messing with my head actually - if I was an American I would describe myself as being 'very conflicted’.

It is killing me that my new vegetable patch, nurtured with my own bare hands is simultaneously flourishing and being ravaged by wildlife – this means that my project is a raging success, I made the garden to attract these bastards, why do I feel like machine gunning them all off?

*Our Lovely House is like a damp cave all year round, mud brick and stone buildings are very common in this region, it should be a very 'breatheable’ structure, the original limestone render on the outside of our house has been 'repaired’ with concrete in large patches, - this is what keeps the house so damp.

More Ants - Hooray!

Monday 30th March
The weekend was chaotic; Mrs Druid reckoned she could sneak her sheep onto the new grazing without my noticing - Saturday morning I arrived back from shopping to discover the house surrounded by a bleating herd of the woolly bastards. Mrs Druid relies on her blind and nervous old dog to help her control the sheep which is a touching but losing battle. In the midst of all this a carload of house guests pulled in to the drive behind me. The electric fence didn’t work very well and during the course of the weekend there were many escaped sheep alerts.

On Saturday evening we turned the main room into a grand banqueting hall for The Director's birthday party, I planted lots of big candles round the room in mounds of clay (we spent quite a long time trying to make them not look like dog turds but had to give that up as it was too time-consuming) the overall effect struck me as quite gothic.

Obviously there was loads of food but I’m beyond going into all that, I will say that if you had some raspberries and cream but had run out of time to do anything fancy, especially if a large man had just sat on the bag of macaroons, the day can be saved - just with whip the cream, mix in the raspberries and the bits of macaroons - it’s terrific.

Over the weekend our guests got fed up with rounding up sheep and went off on a walk. Somewhere along the way someone tripped over an ants nest – a great big one right on a path in the wood (easy camera access - hurrah!). This is great because it makes our captive ant catastrophe less of a catastrophe.

Weekly Round Up

Friday 27th
We’ve had some trials this week; someone went out every morning to set up a timelapse sequence and every day the focus was out. Spider Man was due to turn up on Monday to start logging our footage, he phoned to say that he’d written off his car so we arranged that I’d pick him up at the train station and he’d stay over at our place for a couple of days. On the journey from the station I asked him what happened with his car, he told me that he’d been out on a moth hunt and fell asleep on his way home, he woke the next morning upside down in a field. I might have to rethink the name I've given him.

Mrs Druid has been around a lot over the last few days putting up an electric fence on our land in preparation for bringing her sheep in to graze, she is actually quite lecherous and keeps luring the Camera Boys away from filming to help her bang in her posts. I am now experiencing quite a lot of irritable feelings towards her so I’ve asked her to take the weekend off and we’ll help her bring her sheep in next week*.

It’s gone quiet for a moment, we’ve had lunch, I’ve just taken Spider/Moth/WhateverMan back to the station and one of the Camera Boys has gone back to the UK for a week, the rest of the afternoon is for tidying up. I’m a bit distracted though, The Director has arrived at a significant birthday and soon people are going to start turning up for the weekend celebrations.


* we’ve been bribed with the promise of half a lamb in return for the grazing, there is a lot of grassland here and we can’t afford a mower because we’ve still not got the money from the Big Controller that was due last year

Animal Update
Julie the bereaved cat: has transformed into quite a friendly thing, still very timid but she hangs around us while we’re outside and lets me stroke her sometimes.

Ants: none of them have survived last week's attack, the other relocations we tried in more controlled conditions were also unsuccessful.

Bumble Bees: have made their special wooden box comfy with mud and moss and are happily flying in and out of their new home - we will be filming them next week.

Housing Crisis

19th March
On Tuesday the weather was looking good for rehousing the carpenter ant colony. One of the prepared tree trunks was set nice and firm by the garden shed, the ants had been taken out of the fridge the day before and left in a cool place to acclimatise. We placed them by the entry hole on the tree trunk with some sugar water nearby, they wandered around a bit and gradually disappeared into the trunk - Hooray.

We were just slapping high fives when the TNT van pulled in to the drive, the driver had got out of the cab and we could see her gesticulating at us.

The driver, Sylvie, knows us quite well by now, it turns out that she lives in a town an hour’s drive from here, next door to the mother of the woman who lives three houses away from me, with this degree of neighbourly proximity we’re practically sisters - Sylvie usually stops for coffee after she’s handed over a box of creatures.

On Tuesday Sylvie didn’t stay for coffee, she was a bit irate, she told us that she’d heard buzzing and realised that her cab was filling with bumble bees, she pulled over, slapped a bit of parcel tape over the tear in our package and continued, a little faster than she should've, to us.

Now all our attention was on the bumble bees, we could feel through the outer wrapping that the inner casing was broken. We had prepared a wooden box to house these bees and were keen to transfer them to this as soon as possible - how to get the bees out of the broken package without them all just flying away?

Bees can’t see red light and won’t fly in the dark, we already had a dark room in one of the stables where we’d been filming the blossom, there was even a work table in there, so we set up a red light and undid the package on the table, the bees all tumbled out, they fell off the table and were crawling around on the floor, someone went to find things to scoop them up with.

At this point we heard The Director yelling something about the carpenter ants being under attack. The Camera Boys stayed to herd the bumble bees and I ran off to the ants, arriving on a scene of devastation, lots of tiny black ants had swarmed over our great big carpenter ants who, by this time, had fallen off the tree trunk and were lying around in the grass clearly in a bad way, The Director was sweeping away the black ants and trying to resuscitate the wounded carpenters. We tried to poke the unwounded ants back in their ant hole but they kept coming back out to look for their comrades.

We’ve set up an ant hospital in a margarine container where we hope the survivors might recover...

Ant Condos

13th March
We’ve been preparing the new homes for the ant colonies that are hibernating in the fridge. We have some fat logs and tree stumps ready for the carpenter ants, a section is sliced off the log and holes are drilled to make a network of chambers, most of the holes will be bunged up on the outside with little corks leaving just two exits/entrances for the ants, when they have settled in we can unbung a hole and put in an endoscope to film what’s going on.

meanwhile down at the bar...
Shane has arrived to run the village bar, Kurt’s younger brother and chief adversary. Kurt was nursing a black eye when I took him and his wife to the airport.

Shane works out a lot, his body is waxed and his hair shorn with a number two blade, he wears neatly pressed white shirts, black trousers and shiny Doc Martin boots. He also has an intense dislike of women, non-French people and anyone over 30 ... he does not possess a driving license. Our village is a 20-minute drive from the nearest shop. Because I would like the bar to survive I have agreed to take him shopping with me once a week until his friend arrives to help him out next month.

Our first run to the shops didn’t go particularly well because I resent being treated like his personal chauffeuse and he doesn’t seem to like the sharp edge of my tongue.

Luftwaffe Gretcha

5th February
The day after the Hair Rubbing Supper I made an English Sunday Roast lunch for my French neighbours. They found many aspects of the meal bizarre, I demonstrated pouring gravy over my chicken and roast vegetables, my friends watched agog and commented that it was un idée trés original, in a tone that translated as 'that looks weird and disgusting'.

Chicken eaten and cleared away. I am about to serve my best walnut-and-treacle-tart but am interrupted by the sound of a car drawing up outside. One of the guests said 

That's  Bic and his wife, I have asked them to bring my ducks here.

The Bics came in and agreed to join us for dessert and coffee, the ducks, being of the deceased variety, were popped in the (food) fridge* and I once again prepared to put  knife to tart... but once again, the sound of another car this one squealing into the yard, then someone pushing open the front door, shouting. An elderly lady burst into the dining room waving a shoebox, telling us in her strong German accent that she was Gretcha ... had seen the November film show ... wanted to donate her butterfly collection ... kept forgetting ... came straight over before she forgot again.

We all stood up and peered in as Gretcha lifted the box lid revealing a mass of jumbled up bits of butterflies and moths. I accepted the gift and thanked her. There was more.  Gretcha pulled out a screwed up knob of tissue from her pocket and handed it to me with much gravity. 

I unwrapped a grey and rapidly decomposing leech. Everyone recoiled. 

I said
Lovely, I’ll put it in the fridge with the others
There was quiet, people were looking at me strangely.

* I have two fridges, one for the usual reasons and the other for dormant ants, butterfly pupae and any other creature we might find useful for filming later on

Insect Shopping

30th December
There are lots of things we need for spring filming, I’m searching the internet for suppliers of various insect species and their eggs or larvae. It's a strange world out there, here’s the Hot List of Top Ten best sellers at Blades Biological;
Acetobacter aceti-
Aspergillus oryzae
Blood Splatter
Analysis Kit
Ants
Black Ants
Flour Beetles Wild Type
Flour Beetles Wild Type
Larder Beetles
Human lleum
Aquarium Heater/ Stats

Do visit Blades: if you get there quick I see they have Diapherodes Gigantea on a special offer of £8.31 for 2.

It also seems strange to keep live things in the fridge, some butterfly cocoons were delivered the other day and I sent an anxious email to the suppliers who responded:

Dear Lulu
It’s fine that they’re just all loose in the bottom and there should be NO holes, so if you have made holes tape them up again. The fridge is fine too, it keeps them at a constant temperature until you need them

Also the black ones are not dead.

Best Wishes etc.


As far as possible we want to film things in the wild and there are some ant species we can’t find so we drove out to visit a chap who is famous for his work on the reproductive strategies of ants.

Our expert is a small elderly man with a sideways tilt to his head and a scuttling walk that is decidedly ant-like. His house is stuffed with ant-related art. I spent a swivel-headed afternoon translating while The Director and Antman got lost in myrmecological debate.


Cat update:
Since it’s been colder I’ve been putting food out regularly for Kevin and Julie - they’re still catching small furry creatures but now they leave the bodies on the back step for us to eat.