Last week Brian visited Esther Coles’ hives on her allotment in Crouch End to appear in the beekeeping podcast she started during lockdown with her best mate, fellow actor, Jane Horrocks.
Jane clearly enjoyed it.
Esther was one of Brian’s first students. Twelve years ago Urban Bees taught 20 budding beekeepers over the course of a year how to become responsible urban beekeepers and they got bees and hive at the end of the training, courtesy of the Co-op’s Plan Bee campaign. Since then, Esther and Brian have become good friends. He last came to see her hives when he was the north London bee inspector for the government’s National Bee Unit a few years ago.
Esther has been hoping to get Brian down to the allotment to look at the 3 bee hives when rules permitted. When it finally happened last week, her and Jane were so excited they kept chanting Brian’s name!
If you listen to the podcast, you’ll know that Esther was worried that her bees may have a bacterial disease or a virus spread by the varroa mite. So, in this episode, Brian takes them through each of the hives explaining clearly and precisely what is going on.
There are a few surprises along the way….
Listen to the Queen Bees podcast, Series 3: episode 7 ‘Buzzing with the Drones’ here