More than Honey

Things are beginning to fall into place. We’ll take up shooting mid-May in Switzerland. Weather voodoo starts now. Don’t need blue skies, but decent temperatures for bees to come out. And some flowers. Should be okay, though, at this time of the year. Even at 1200m. But it has been a long winter in Switzerland and you can’t be sure of anything at the moment. People are eager to find out how their bees are doing, too.

For us: still a lot to figure out. Bee suits for the crew, for example. Did our first tests last week in the bee yard of Free University Berlin with the kind help of beekeeper Peter Knoll and others. Hat and camera are not yet compatible. Black lense and bees don’t work too well together, too. Bees seem to thoroughly dislike black shiny objects. The camera we can wrap up in white (an old t-shirt does the job pretty well), but the lense? Stinging is not the problem, of course, but you only want so many bees buzzing into your frame during an interview. And certainly you don’t want them to sit there! So – any ideas anybody?!

At least, we were lucky with the weather. Hail only started after we finished.