TV Watch: Bees, Butterflies and Blooms

[callmemadam]

Yesterday evening I watched the first episode of Sarah Raven’s new series Bees, Butterflies and Blooms. I was expecting a programme about wildflowers and what I got was a green lecture. Heaven help us, the lovely châtelaine of Sissinghurst and entrepreneur (euse?) of Perch Hill was ‘on a mission’. I was disgusted to see what amounted to a free

Comments

[aellia]

I didn't see that,but I'm very worried about bees. For the third summer running I have had great numbers of bees coming to the step outside of my back door to die.
I know they are looking for something,but I don't know what.

And the Co-op uses chicken from Thailand in most of their chilled ready meals!

I did watch Supersmart Animals. That was good.
x

[callmemadam]

I had no idea there were so many species of bee living here, nor that they were so much at risk. Horrid for you to see all those dead ones.

[trixiebacon]

I'm afraid this is going to be a bit vague, but I remember hearing a programme on R4 about a farmer in Somerset who has large areas of meadows. An older person visited one and was moved to see the sheer amount of insect and bird life (and therefore bird song), as it had been in their childhood. I think of that when I look out the back and see the birds fly across - and we've probably got a lot more than most here.

[_lethe_]

Just a thought: is it essential for female ecologists to have ratty hair? (I don’t mean Sarah.)

Now I'm so curious to know whom you do mean :D

[callmemadam]

Some other women on the programme!

[gwendraith]

I didn't see the program but I read somewhere that if bees disappear the world could starve, so important are they for pollinating food crops. Butterflies too, they are all pivotal in the food chain process. I hope we aren't too late to put it right. I did see plenty of bees last year after a quiet year before.

[anonymous]

I think it is important that there be people like her to whom younger gardeners might listen. We've been reading stuff for years and have (hopefully) learned, but I'm always amazed at things I expected kids to know that they don't.

[callmemadam]

You're right. I'm far too inclined to think, 'I know all this old stuff', forgetting that other people may not.