Nature

This is Bristol, England...

and this is my garden.

It's not really that special.

We've just let some of the wild back in.

But as a wildlife filmmaker, I knew there were revelations here

that could be just as amazing

as anything I'd ever filmed across the globe.

In the spring of 2020,

as the country goes into lockdown,

outside, the garden is coming alive.

Suddenly, there are bees emerging all over.

These bees, they just go zoom, you know, zoom.

But if they're nesting, I can't get near them.

I can see these little antennae come up,

but they look over, and I'm absolutely still,

but now I have to go to the focus

and as soon as I do that, they go down again.

Discovering the secret life of bees took me

on a journey I was not expecting.

Let's have a look.

Cripes.

Oh, dear.

For over 30 years, I've been filming wild animals

all over the world,

and all of a sudden, I'm locked down at home.

My only escape now from the pandemic

is in my city garden

and my fascination with the wild bees that live here.

Turning my cameras onto my own backyard

is revealing things as spectacular

as anything I have ever seen before.

Transporting me to another universe.

Another dimension of existence.

Have I just got pandemic fever

or is it just another midlife crisis?

Nah. I'm too old for a midlife crisis,

it's more of a late-life revelation.

If you've got something just going like this,

well, you know,

you don't know what the hell it's doing.

You really need fast reflexes,

you need equipment that's barely been developed,

you have to film everything in slow motion,

and you have to have the reactions of a hawk.

I've probably got reactions as good as a rabbit.

Probably not even that good.

I'm traveling into a hidden world

but one that exists around us all.

Even in a garden like this in the middle of the city,

there is an astonishing diversity of bees.

If I told people, "Oh, yeah, there's 60 species of bee

in my garden, "they go," Really?

Are you sure?"

I go, "Yeah, well more than 60."

One of the very first bees out

is the hairy-footed flower bee.

Check out his hairy legs.

I can get close to film these bees

because they fly between the same patches of flowers,

scent-marking their routes as they go.

They're like perfumed bee highways.

These bees just go zoom, you know, zoom.

These, of all the bees, are the most fun to watch

because of their sheer precision flying.

They can literally turn

on a sixpence in a fraction of a second.

They got these funny little beady eyes

and they this really kind of keen hovering,

and when the female moves, they follow her round

and they... And I just love that.

In those early weeks, most of the other bees

were not even out yet.

Today the prime minister has announced

that to save lives

and to stop the spread of the virus, we must stay at home.

As everyone in the country retreats indoors,

underground, the garden is coming alive.

What most people don't realize is actually bees

spend much of their lives

not as a lovely bee flying around in the sun

but in the dark as an egg,

or a sort of maggoty thing in a nest somewhere.

Then there's the transformation,

from a larvae...

into a flying wonder of nature.

Metamorphosis...

It really is an extraordinary process.

It takes 21 days

for these domesticated honey bees to make the leap.

There are 270 other species of bee in this country.

They are the wild bees.

Very different to the social honey bee

that we're all so used to.

They mostly live solitary lives,

and many will have been waiting fully formed

throughout the winter.

Each species with its own particular time to emerge,

coinciding with the flowers it likes the best.

In complete darkness,

somehow each bee knows which way to head

on its journey to reach the light.

This is the first time they've seen the world.

When the bee comes out of its hole, they sit there

and they look out and they do this with their head.

They're doing, like, a kind of pixel shift thing.

I think what they're trying to do

is make a very high-resolution image

that they will need to remember to return to.

Suddenly, there are bees emerging all over the garden.

It's kicking off all over the place.

But this is the challenge...

if I want to know more about their lives,

somehow, I've got to follow them.

This garden in spring is utterly beautiful.

I'm amazed that so much diversity can exist

in such a small place.

It's not really special,

we've just let some of the wild back in.

We didn't really try very hard to kind of manicure it.

We just... A lot of things we just relaxed about.

It's full of weeds basically is what you're saying?

There's no such thing as a weed,

there's only plants that people don't understand.

They're all as beautiful as any kind of fancy tulips

or chrysanthemums.

Indeed for me, they're more beautiful

because they've been created entirely

by the forces of evolution.

That is nature.

For me, a flower is more beautiful

if you can see the bee it was built for actually using it.

The flower bees have evolved

alongside tubular flowers like these.

It's not until you have the luxury of having

the pictures in slow motion,

in focus, in a way that you can go,

"Oh, I see, that's what it's doing."

I had no idea they had such huge tongues,

it really is longer than its body.

As she drinks, she buzzes her wing muscles,

dislodging pollen onto her body...

...which she takes to the next flower.

Bees are at the center of the world's pollination services.

They are pollinating the fabric of life.

Yet, all over the world, bees are declining.

We really do need to start taking more notice of them.

But opening up the secret life of the bees is not as easy

as I was expecting.

I soon found out that many of the bees

really didn't want to be filmed at all.

The first month was incredibly frustrating

because I had all this extraordinary behavior

just going on in front of me

that I could see from 10 feet away,

but as soon as I tried to zoom in on it with the camera,

it either stopped or, you know, they flew away.

The flower bees kind of accepted me.

I mean, it was easy to frighten them off...

...but some of the other bees I simply couldn't get near.

The furrow bees, you know, if they're nesting,

I can't get near them

and it is hilarious to watch them.

I can see these little antennae come up

and then I can see these little eyes come up,

and they look over and I'm absolutely still,

but now I have to go to the focus,

and as soon as I do that, they go down again.

It can take half a day to get through that process

where the bee's going, "Okay, it's not going away,

I'm hungry, I've got to go and do something."

I've had plenty of experience

filming small animals of all kinds.

My last film was about ants with David Attenborough.

But wild bees are very different.

They're so alert, to get close,

I have to invent all kinds of gadgets.

There we go.

This is a lens. It's a super-tiny,

super-wide-angle lens,

super-high quality.

That is the purpose of all of this stuff.

In order to get anywhere near the bees,

I have to kind of shrink myself down to their size,

but I also have to stretch time.

Bees live in a completely different dimension.

At this scale, we get a fresh view

on the physics of bee existence.

And what it's like to be a creature

that weighs a fraction of an ounce

but that can gather over 100 times its body weight

in pollen in just a matter of weeks.

This is the bee that everyone said couldn't possibly fly,

but of course she can fly extremely well.

You see those wing beats? Above them are mini tornados

which actually suck her into the air.

In this dimension, the sound shifts as well.

Listening to bird calls filmed at this speed

evokes their dinosaur origins.

Well, for me anyway.

It is incredible to see how they develop