When our beekeeper stopped by recently, we took the opportunity to join him on the roof of the London Muslim Centre. Our Technical Manager grabbed his phones, getting as close as he could.

This video was taken on his Xiaomi Mi 8:

You’ll see the beekeeper open up one of the hives, to add an extra level. The grid he puts on first is a Queen Excluder – the queen is too large to get through it, but the workers can pass; so no eggs can be laid in the new level. The beekeeper then adds a Super, where the worker bees will be able to store honey.

There’s plenty more to see in the close-up shots, with bees setting off for forage, whilst others return laden with pollen – and sometimes covered in it. You’ll also see some bees fanning away from the entrance, which we explained in an earlier blog entry.

There’s a very short clip below, trying out the Mi 8’s super slow-mo, at 960 frames per second:

We'd like to try more ways of capturing the activity of our bees in future, insha’Allah.

Finally, our Technical Manager also took some video clips with his old Apple iPhone 6S: