The Hive (Full Episode) | Secrets of the Bees Narrated by Bertie Gregory | National Geographic

[buzzing] [Bertie] You hear them before you see them. Buzzing around the garden. Hovering over the flowers. Bees. Wow! So much honey! But what if I told you bees could be the most important animals on the planet? Oh, you are beautiful! I'm cinematographer and National Geographic Explorer, Bertie Gregory. Hello everyone! For three years, our crews have used special cameras to uncover the hidden world behind the buzz. A world of impossible architecture, extraordinary intelligence. -Push, push, push. Oh my gosh, yes! [Bertie] And secret dances. That is a waggle. Now I wonder what they're saying? Bees are more than just honey-makers. More than stingers. More than we ever imagined. Poor bees, they're just getting soaked, huddling together, desperately trying to keep warm. There are over 20,000 species of bees. And together, they pollinate a third of the food we eat. So come closer. The bees will reveal their secrets. [♪ theme music playing] In the grip of winter, this hive seems abandoned. But deep inside, a secret world few have ever seen. A family of honeybees huddled for warmth. For months, they've lived on honey made from the nectar of last summer's flowers. Producing it took the sacrifice of thousands. And in just a few short weeks, they'll have to do it all over again. [♪ whimsical music playing] When temperatures outside reach 50 degrees, the hive comes alive. And the first new bee of the year is ready to emerge. Let's call her Worker Bee 1. Like all worker bees, she's female. Males are born later in the season. What makes her a bee, and different from the millions of other flying insects, are the thousands of tiny feathered hairs covering her body. They're even on her eyes. These hairs are how she'll collect pollen. But not for a few weeks. Right now, she's hungry, and kind of clueless. At a day old, Worker Bee 1 is completely reliant on her older sisters. This isn't just food she's sucking in. But a protein-rich liquid infused with pheromones. A chemical instruction to make her think and act like her sisters. Now, she knows how to be a bee, and what her role is in this extraordinary superorganism. You know, I've spent a good chunk of my life going to far-flung places to film big animals. And if I'm honest, I've overlooked the bees. But that was a mistake, because, despite their size, they might just be the most important animals on the planet. One in every three bites of food we eat is pollinated by a bee. And there is just as much drama in a bee hive, than on any African savannah. Hello, my buzzy friends! It's all good! Let's see how you're doing. Well, you all seem pretty chill, so I'm gonna take my hood off. Whoa, that's better. Look at this one here. Little newborn bee! Go on, you can do it. Yes! Good job! Look at that. Her first steps as an adult bee. Oh, you are beautiful. Hello. And I'm not afraid because for the first day of their life, they can't sting. So you're gonna be a friendly bee, aren't you? Well, it's so good to see a baby bee, that means the colony's growing, and they need the numbers. This family has a lot to do. From raising 60,000 new bees to collecting nectar from millions of flowers. All to make the 40 pounds of honey they need for winter. See you later, everyone, good luck! And the clock starts now. The key to the entire operation comes down to just one bee. The largest, longest-lived, and most revered bee in the family... ...The queen. Mother to everyone in the hive. Her job is to lay eggs. She glues one to the bottom of a cell. Then, moves onto the next. Egg, glue, move on, repeat. 2,000 times a day. She could live five years, doing nothing, but laying eggs. No time to rest. No time to raise her babies. That job is left to Bee 1 and her sisters. They feed the larvae around the clock with a soup of high-protein pollen, collected from flowers. In just a week, the babies grow 1,000 times bigger. And are then tucked into their cells, ready for their radical transformation into adults. So extraordinary, yet rarely witnessed. When this generation emerges, they'll take over nursery duty. Leaving Bee 1 and her wave of sisters to move on to other important jobs in the hive. Working together is at the heart of honeybee society. But most bees have to go it alone. Solitary, like this red-tailed mason bee. A little bee, with some unique talents. She's on a quest to find a place to lay her first egg. But only one kind of nest will do. An empty snail shell. This one's too small. Nope. Ugh, no chance! Could this be the one? Perfect! Next, she gathers pollen, food for when her youngster hatches. It also becomes a bed for her egg. But the pollen attracts a gang of red ants. Her baby's future is at stake. But this time, big jaws trump smaller ones. Nursery secure, for now. But the shell's at the wrong angle! Rain could flood the entrance. She can't let that happen. By excavating the soil around her shell, she creates the space to flip it. And settles it into the ground. But there's one final problem to solve, how to hide the shell. And the way she does that has earned her the nickname. The Broomstick bee! Like a mini Harry Potter, she carries stick after stick back to her shell. This one's a little ambitious! She's smart enough to use the world around her. Weaving an impenetrable fortress with hundreds of sticks to perfectly camouflage her nest and protect her precious egg. Once complete, she buzzes off. But before the season's up, she'll build at least 20 more nests. A big job for one little bee. As summer draws near, our honey bee population has nearly doubled. They need more space. So young Bee 1 is assigned to the honeycomb construction crew. With the lower walls complete, her job is to build up. Using her sisters as a living scaffold. She can climb anywhere in the hive. And she's come prepared with tiny discs of wax made by special glands on her body. Bees are the only animals to use wax as a building material, and they shape it into one of the wonders of animal architecture. The six-sided bee cell. It's an engineering marvel. Incredibly strong, yet almost weightless. The perfect space-saving shape that uses the least amount of wax. The hive needs 200,000 new cells, as cradles for every new bee, and to store their precious honey. The future of the family depends on it. But their growing stores, are bound to attract trouble. So, to keep out thieves, Bee 1 is now assigned to be a bouncer. Every bee in the hive smells the same. Their scent is an "all-access" passcode. Those that don't belong smell different. And wasps are real stinkers. These wanna-bees will do all they can to sneak inside and steal the honey. Just not on her watch. In the mountain forests of Japan, the Asian honeybee faces a much more frightening foe. Giant hornets, wasps on steroids! Known by some as murder hornets. Because that is what they do. A nearby hive is in the firing line. The honeybee's first line of defense, is the bee equivalent of a stadium wave. Designed to be a show of strength. But it's not scaring the hornet. The bees retreat and regroup. Luckily, the entrance is too narrow for the giant. Those inside are safe. But this is just a scout, gathering intelligence. The hornet marks the hive with a chemical scent... ...that will guide her and her clan right back. The bees need to get rid of the smell, fast. And what they do next is astonishing. Workers race to collect fragrant leaves to mask the hornet's scent. This extraordinary behavior is a rare example of tool use. The bees work quickly. But not fast enough. The hornet's back! With her sisters. Hornets eat adult bees. But what they're really after, are the thousands of larvae inside. And together, they slice their way in. [♪ intense music playing] The bees' only hope for survival is to respond as one. Hold... Now! The bees vibrate their wings together to generate extreme heat. The temperature in the center reaches 115 degrees. Hot enough to fry a hornet. The next invader gets the same treatment. Their collective action has achieved the near impossible and saved the colony. But the abilities of an individual bee can be just as impressive. Dr. Sammy Ramsey is one of the most influential bee scientists in the world. [Sammy] Bees are amongst the most intelligent insects on the planet. Their brain is about the size of a pinhead, but it's packed with these neurons that are specifically structured for learning. [Bertie] Sammy has come to Queen Mary University of London to see firsthand a remarkable breakthrough that looks inside the mind of a bee. [Sammy] The bumblebee lab is at the forefront of understanding bee intelligence. -We know that these-- [Bertie] Dr. Alice Bridges is showing Sammy an experiment, one that surprised the scientific community. -Go, go! Alright, she's in! [Bertie] Set loose in the chamber, these bumblebees have a choice, make a beeline for the food, or stop and play with wooden balls. -There's no real reward on this side. There's no source of food. There's just the option to play. -Yeah, bees are pretty reward-driven animals, like, they always want to get more food, and yet we see here that they chose to play instead. [Sammy] When we think of play, we think of bears and lion cubs and puppies. Insects are not the creatures that you would normally think of. This study is extraordinary because it's the first time that play has been demonstrated in insects. Play is something that's seen as a means of practicing for the sorts of skills that you'll need more broadly in life. -Exactly! Bees, especially these bumblebees, are gonna be handling so many different types of flowers. Perhaps this is a way that they can refine those skills before leaving the hive. [Bertie] But there's another test that reveals even more about bumblebee intelligence. [Alice] A lot of our experiments that we do here, we design tasks as kind of these artificial flowers. [Sammy] Ah! [Alice] We put on this yellow target here, sugary water, they go crazy for this! But ah, they can't get to it, because, because of the lid. They have to do a series of two behaviors, so they have to move the blue door first. -Oh, wow. -Push that out of the way, and then. -And then the red one. I don't think a lot of people would have expected a bee to be able to solve this. [Bertie] For the experiment to work, one bee has to be trained. -Does someone in here know what they're doing? -Yep, we have a bee already trained, um, number 75, if you can see her? -75, Oh, yeah, there she goes. [both] There you go. [Samy] Oh, she's motivated. Oh, she's going straight for the-- [amazement chuckle] [Alice] She's hopefully gonna show us what we've taught her. -Okay, so she has to move the blue door first, then the red one. You're going for the red. Come on. [Alice] They always give it a little go, just in case. -Yeah, just in case. Okay, but no, it looks like she's figured it out. [Alice] Come on, she knows what to do. -Come on, come on, push, push, push, yes. [Alice] Yes. [Sammy] Go 75, you got this. [Alice] Come on, 75. [Sammy] We are rooting for you. There it goes! Keep pushing. [Alice] Come on, ooh! [Sammy] Oh-ho! Doing one thing to get there would be the single order thinking, but the second order thinking is I have to move this in order to move that. They're able to see farther into the future than just the immediate future. It's really quite remarkable. -The really cool thing about this experiment is that if we leave her in here for long enough with the box, with the other bees, they'll be able to learn how to open the box with no training at all, just from observing her. [Bertie] But have the untrained bee students been paying attention? [Alice] We've got another bee here who might have sort of started to figure out what's going on, she's following behind. -Are you serious? That quickly? -Yeah! Can you push that? [Sammy] Come on. [both] Oh my gosh! [Sammy] What a good bee! Okay, there's one more step in this process. Push, push, push, push. -Come on! Come on! -Success! The way that these insects have had to think their way around problems forces us to think differently, because they are a lot more intelligent and aware than we've given them credit. [Bertie] A bee's problem-solving skills are vital in their daily lives. Especially when gathering food, like pollen. And few do it quite like the buff-tailed bumblebee. This flower tucks its pollen away in tubular petals hard to reach. So she becomes a jackhammer. Buzzing at up to 400 vibrations per second, blasting the hidden pollen loose. Where she catches it on her hairy belly. But unlocking this treasure takes practice, as this first timer discovers. Whoops! She's nailed the loosening bit at least. Like any new skill, success comes from trial and error. Yeah, there you go! The bee now uses her legs to brush the pollen grains down her body. Next, she does something remarkable and never filmed before. To stop the pollen blowing off in flight, she adds a drop of nectar, passed to her back legs, to glue the grains into a solid packet for travel. Back at the hive, summer is in full swing. Inside, Bee 1 has finally been promoted to the worker's top job. Her new mission, collect pollen and the raw ingredient for honey... ...Nectar! But where to get it? As usual, she turns to an older sister, introducing the waggle dance. It's how honeybees talk to each other. These groovy moves tell others not just where to find the best nectar, but the angle to take when leaving the hive. How far away it is. And even any detours along the way. It's a bee's GPS! The 'beeline' the most direct path to the nectar. Message received. But leaving the hive is a risky business, especially when it's your first time. There's good reason for her to be hesitant. Nearly half of all new foragers never see their family again. One of the biggest dangers is getting lost. So, on take-off, Bee 1 faces the hive. Then, makes a mental note of the landmarks around it. Once she's locked in the view, she's off. The trip could take her two miles from home. With pitstops at thousands of flowers. In her lifetime, she'll gather less than a teaspoon of nectar. But every drop is vital to the family. Not everything the flower hides is sweet. A crab spider. For Bee 1, it's hard to separate petal from predator. But then she's never seen a spider before. Lucky for her, this crab spider isn't hungry. But some sisters aren't so fortunate. Next stop pollen. The powdery grains plants use to reproduce, and a vital bee food. The little pollen grains stick to her hairs. Some will drop off on different flowers. Seeding them as she goes. This is the way bees pollinate three-quarters of all flowering plants. A partnership that dates back to the age of the dinosaurs. Loaded with food, she heads for home. But when your cargo of nectar and pollen doubles your weight, it can make touchdowns, well, tricky. Inside, Bee 1 unloads her baskets of pollen. It'll be used later to feed the larvae. Then, she passes her nectar to a sister. But this isn't food sharing, it's the recipe for making honey. With each transfer, the sisters add enzymes that break down the nectar to make it edible. The workers then store this sugar solution in cells. But there's one final step. Beating their wings at 170 times a second. The sisters fan the mixture to evaporate the water. And after three fantastic days, the transformation is complete. Nectar has become liquid gold. Honey! It takes 2 million flowers to make just one pound of honey. The sisters will need 40 times that to see them through winter. And they're only halfway there. For some bees, just finding nectar is the hardest part. In the Amazon jungle, flowers are less common than you'd think. So firebees have a plan B. Sap-sucking treehoppers! But the bees don't eat the little suckers. They farm them! Tree hoppers excrete a sugary substance called honeydew, similar to nectar. And they're willing to trade it... ...for protection from their enemies, like assassin bugs. Now, to claim the reward. But there's no payment without a little tickling. Who needs flowers, when getting food is like turning on a tap? But there's a catch, honeydew is too heavy to fly with, so the firebees must lighten the load. Unlike honeybees, they let the sun's heat evaporate the water, and concentrate it into a sugary syrup that's light enough to carry home. Firebees are not the only ones who've had to adapt to a scarcity of nectar. There's one bee in this jungle that's taken its diet in a whole new direction. Vulture bees, the world's most unusual bee. Like their namesake, they have a taste for the dead. And their sense of smell is so acute they can sniff out their food from half a mile away. A rancid fish. This is the only bee that relies on rotting flesh. She may have found the fish first, but you can always rely on a fly to muscle in on a free meal. Finders keepers doesn't work here. But she is a bee with attitude! Willing to go jaw to jaw with even the roughest-looking diners. Luckily, her sisters appear and help to see off the competition. Just like real vultures, these bees are the ultimate clean-up crew. And amazingly, they can even turn this digested meat into honey. The sisterhood is having a successful summer. They've filled more than half their honey cells. But it's come at a cost. Our Bee 1, the year's first arrival has given it her all. Being a worker, her life was sweet but short. To stop the spread of disease, fallen sisters must be removed. But, for some, letting go can be hard. Bee 1 isn't the only casualty. Hundreds of sisters die every day. And yet, the colony has ballooned to over 60,000. A population boom that triggers the most dramatic event in the family's life. It's the signal for the queen to leave the hive and start a new colony. Many of her daughters must follow. But, before they leave, they feast on the hard-won stores. It could be days before they'll feed again. We don't yet understand what makes one bee leave and another stay. But soon, hundreds, then thousands, join the queen. Half the colony. colonize new locations. 30,000 now take to the air in a swarm. Their first task is to set up a temporary base. Scouts will set off from here to look for a permanent home. And that makes it a perfect time for me to check in. You are looking very beautiful. So many bees! It's just this massive living structure. And buried deep down in the center is the Queen, with all the other workers gathering around her. Just the most amazing thing to look at. It looks pretty intimidating; there's a lot of stinging power right there, but, oh, right on my lip. Please don't go in my mouth! See, it's a common misconception that when bees are swarming, they're always very angry and aggressive. But they don't have any honey or brood to defend, so they're really kind of preoccupied at the moment. I'm just part of the landscape. So, this is a great opportunity to film them up close. The ones at the top, holding onto the branch, are doing the heavy lifting. But every bee in the swarm plays a part by holding tight to her sisters. Wow. [thunder and rain] And tonight, it looks as if they'll have to hold on tighter than ever. I think rain's coming. It's the last thing the vulnerable family needs. It is pouring! Poor bees, they're just getting soaked. With nothing to shield them, the entire colony could die from the cold. They're huddling together, desperately trying to get warm. But even now, the bees work together. They rotate their positions to take their turn out in the elements. But if it keeps raining like this, they won't survive the night. There's nothing I can do but hope they'll make it till morning. things look just as bleak. They've lost their queen and half their workers. Honey supplies are down, and winter is just four months away. [♪ suspenseful music playing]