Nature (1982–…): Season 40, Episode 1 - My Garden of a Thousand Bees - full transcript

Dohrn: 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.

♪

♪

Dohrn: Let's have a look.

Cripes.

Oh, dear.



Man:

Dohrn: 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.

♪

Bees are fast. You can't film
them with ordinary cameras

and ordinary lenses.

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.

Man: Today the prime
minister has announced

that to save lives

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

Dohrn: 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.

♪

Woman: ♪ Open your eyes ♪

♪ Look around you ♪

♪ Feel the breeze ♪

♪ On your face ♪

♪ And breathe in ♪

Dohrn: 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.

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

Dohrn: 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

an understanding
of their surroundings

and how their experience grows.

When any of the bees come
out, most of them have never

even seen a flower before.
They don't know what it is.

When they discover
something like a dandelion,

they get plastered in pollen.

You only see that on
the first days in spring.

Shortly after, they know

that they don't want
to get covered in pollen.

They either collect
it or leave it alone.

It seems to me
they are learning.

But actually, for me, the
most interesting bit is the males

when they emerge, not only
have they not seen flowers,

they've never seen
a female either.

They must have some kind
of instinctive urge to look

for something that
resembles a female.

But they are not
very good at it yet.

They're jumping on flies,
they're jumping on leaves,

they're jumping on completely
different species of bee.

This only happens in
the early part of their lives.

They learn quickly
from their mistakes.

They only live a week or so,

and the race is
on to find a mate.

I'm not sure I could say
that insects were in love,

but certainly male
bees are in lust.

The flower bee males
are actually quite good

at identifying their females.

Even so, he's still
not having much luck.

I think what his aim is

he wants to jump on her back

and enclose her wings
so that she can't fly away.

Time after time,
he fails miserably.

She was just foraging
quietly on her own.

Next thing she knows,
she's being slammed

from the side by an amorous male

and now they're tumbling
through the undergrowth.

A look of shock,
anger, horror, you know,

even in a bee with
no facial expressions

tells me that this isn't good.

Now he's just looking at
her "Oh, I love you, I do.

I love you."

He's going "Yeah,
I love you, I do.

Oh, yeah."

♪

Hunting for females
is tiring work.

This male is looking
for a hole to rest in.

♪

But not all the holes are empty.

♪

♪

♪

For a few weeks in the year,

hungry green fang spiders
feast on naive flower bee males,

helping to weed out
the slow and dim-witted.

A bigger threat to
most bees in my garden

comes not from
spiders, but other bees.

Like the sinister-looking
nomad bee...

who is looking for
the underground nest

of a mining bee

by following her.

When the mining bee
turns, the nomad immediately

drops to the ground
as if playing dead.

When the mining bee
thinks the coast is clear,

she goes to her burrow.

The nomad is watching.

As the mining bee leaves,
the nomad bee sneaks in

to lay her egg in the nest...

where her larvae will
eat the mining bee egg

and feast on her pollen store.

No wonder so many of these
bees hate being watched.

♪

As spring draws to a close,

I've already counted over 30
species of bee in the garden.

And the variety is... Is
actually quite mind-boggling.

From minute yellow-faced
bees to gigantic bumblebees.

From shiny sweat bees

to hairy carder bees.

♪

From the good old honey bees...

to these scissor bees.

No bigger than a mosquito.

♪

Filming this scale of bee

makes a difficult task
practically impossible.

They block their nests with
the tiniest grains of sand.

I'm focused on an area

that's about that big, you
know, if you can imagine.

Blinking would make
the camera shake.

You know, sometimes you can
see the heartbeat going like this

as I'm trying to film it.

Phew. It's a nightmare, mate.

There's a new bee out.

It's a wool carder bee.

The male is a monster

and you can see the
female is half his size.

♪

This male owns
all of these flowers.

♪

He'll chase anything that
comes into this territory.

Bees like this
bumblebee are in trouble

if one of these guys is around.

On his rear end, he's got some

really quite
vicious-looking spikes

which can inflict serious
damage to his enemies.

He's a bit like a
lion in the sense

that he mates with the
females whenever he can,

he attacks anything
that moves in his territory,

and in particular, when he
meets a male of his own species,

there is trouble.

He meets the other male
and the two of them size

each other up.

He tries to stab
him with his spikes.

The interloper is driven off.

The only welcome bee
in this territory is a female.

The male mates
with the same female

three or four times in a row...

before they seem to get a sense

that they've both done this

and they don't need
to do it anymore.

It does appear as if the
male can actually recognize

which females he's mated with.

He just kind of flies up,
has a look, and then flies off.

So this is the garden
where it all takes place.

And this... this bit
here is particularly good

'cause it's a really hot corner,

and this fence post here is
where the scissor bees live.

That's a particularly
good place to see them.

Well, the Waitrose house...
I bought that in Waitrose...

The male leaf cutters
and the male mason bees

love it for roosting at night,

so sometimes you can
see them all looking out,

like they're all
tucked up in bed

and they're just watching,
waiting for the weather

to pick up.

So this is the flower bee
highway right through here,

and this is where the
males will search for females

and the females might be
here, feeding on the nectar here.

If a male comes along and
he's, like, slams on the brakes...

Then he will hover
and stare at her

in a really appreciative way.

I've never, ever seen
successful mating in this situation.

But I have seen them
mate on the ground.

On his route, he also has
little sunlit patches of leaves

which the female
likes to sit on.

The female... there he is...
The female, she might just be

cleaning pollen off herself
or something like that

and then the male comes
along, same process,

he sees her, he's transfixed,
he's like, "Oh, my God."

It's like a little dance.

He has to kind
of hover round her

and then get closer and closer.

He jumps on her
and he puts his...

Puts some legs around her,

and then basically...
Then he gets up

and he has to... He
gets his hairy legs out

and he starts
waving them around,

but in real time,
it's like about...

You know, it's much
faster than that.

In slow motion, you can
see the tufts on his hairy legs.

He is gently...

Three times he brushes
them on the female's antenna,

then three times he brushes
them on the female's antenna.

♪

It took me a month to
discover what he actually does

with those hairy
legs during sex.

All I knew at the start of that

was that the hairs are
associated with scent.

That's about as much
as anybody ever knew.

♪

By the start of summer,
we seem to have survived

the first wave of the pandemic,

and us humans were finally
being able to leave home

and re-enter the
streets of our city.

♪

But I was in far too deep.

♪

There's a new wave
of bees on its way.

Here, the streets of Bee
City are starting to come alive.

Bee City is really just
some bits of old wood

sort of just along
the very back hedge,

just above the street.

I'd heard that if you drill
some holes in it, you know,

bees like that.

And I noticed
bees were using it.

There seems to be a kind
of shortage of a culmination,

so I built some more.

I thought I'd make a
more proper bee hotel.

♪

They're all interested in holes.

Holes are their thing.

They can't fly past

an interesting hole
without having a look.

They just love it.

♪

It's all about the holes.

This is where bees
create their homes.

That's what wild bees do.

They lay down a larder
of pollen and nectar

on which to lay their egg.

They make an internal
wall, seal off the cell,

then repeat until
this tunnel is full.

♪

Yellow-faced bees are
also moving into Bee City.

They're tiny little things
about 5 millimeters long.

They're so small they're
pretty much invisible.

Most people just don't
even know they're there,

and they just look
like tiny little black flies.

You wouldn't know
what's going on.

These two have made their
homes in a side chamber

of a bigger hole and
they can join forces

to keep guard against
their arch-nemesis...

the wasp gasteruption.

♪

Gasteruption, well,
gasteruption jaculator.

It's an incredible gangly, weird
thing that hovers in such a way

so it just looks like
an alien with a jetpack

just kind of hovering around,

sort of looking for the poor old

yellow-faced bee to
zap with its ray gun.

♪

It has an incredibly
long ovipositor

that it uses to lay its eggs

in the nests of
yellow-faced bees.

Those antennae can
detect the scent of the host.

♪

A yellow-face comes back,
sees an intruder, and attacks.

♪

They've won this small battle,

but their problems
are far from over.

A huge wood-carving
leafcutter appeared in the old city.

It's one of the first of this
species I've ever seen.

♪

She lands right in the
yellow-faced bee's hole.

♪

The yellow-face rears
up on its hind legs

to try and
intimidate this giant.

♪

The way it was now well

and truly blocked to
the yellow-face's nest.

It's tough on the smaller bees,

but shows just how ruthless
these single mothers need to be.

The tunnel definitely
now belonged to her.

♪

I didn't know at the time,
but I would get to know

this bee better than
any others in the garden.

♪

I called her Nicky because
she had a nick in her wing.

But getting close
didn't come easy.

I think it's really
important to know

that the thing that
you are filming

is the thing that the animal
would normally be doing.

When the bee is
relaxed, it's doing

what it wants to do as opposed

to what my presence
might be forcing it to do.

I really wanted
to film leafcutters

because of their amazing
nest-building behavior.

But it is not as easy
to film as I thought.

♪

I honestly sat
by her first tunnel

for like, you know, two days.

I knew that Nicky didn't
want anything to do with me

because she had
absolutely avoided me

at all costs.

And I got really worried,

so I backed off to let
her get on with her life.

♪

In Bee City, it was
easy to get distracted

by all kinds of drama.

In the distance, I
could see the fly.

The jumping spider comes down
again and then he sneaks along,

and he comes up over
again and he looks around

and when they do their little

looking at the fly,
he just gets up there,

then a green bottle
lands over to the left

and he has a look at
that, "No, that's not it."

Fly is doing the grooming,
you know, because a lot of work,

all that grooming, you know,
the back and the shoulders

and the... And doing
the head and the eye.

And he gets to a point,
when he's close enough,

I can see that he's put his
legs down, ready to jump.

He jumps, and
then it's like, "yes,"

and it all comes to a stop
exactly where it left off,

exactly in focus

because the spider had
laid a silk anchor right there.

He's got the fly.

It's a bad fly for bees.

It's one that lays
eggs in bee holes,

and so in this case, the
spider is a friend of the bees,

not an enemy.

While I was trying to
persuade some furrow bees

to let me film
them at their nest,

I noticed that Nicky
had completed

that nest literally
3 meters from me

without me noticing.

Where I'd been
waiting for 2 days

was now a green completed cell

that would have been
exactly the behavior

I was trying to film.

Now, suddenly, I
had a new opportunity.

Nicky was moving to the new
builds to make another nest.

That was probably a month
after she first appeared.

After that, she'd pretty
much accepted me.

There is a moment when
she looks me directly in the eye

but not showing fear.

She just looks at the camera
and then she comes out a bit,

she looks around, she
looks at all the other things,

and she looks at
the camera again

and goes, "Oh, yeah,

I think I'll be off
foraging now. Bye."

And off she goes.

Finally, Nicky shows
me her leaf-cutting skills.

The reason they cut leaves
is to line the wooden tunnel,

making a bee-size cell

before smearing it with
nectar and other stuff.

Then they go off to
gather pollen to fill it.

Leafcutters use their
furry belly to gather pollen,

but they are far from cuddly.

♪

Unlike honey bees,

most of the wild bees
have a sting they can re-use.

And when hassled, they
don't hesitate to use it.

♪

The feisty leafcutters also
have an armor-like exoskeleton.

♪

If this crab spider is to
have any chance of a kill,

it has to find the soft
junction between the head

and the body to
deliver its venom.

♪

A sting in the
face does the trick.

♪

My relationship with Nicky
really seems to be growing.

I mean, you know, most
people would think that's stupid

that a bee and a man
could have a relationship,

but there's no doubt that we
were getting to know each other.

I can tell she's looking at me.

Does she know these are my
eyes? I don't know, I have no idea,

but scientists have shown
that honey bees can recognize

individual people,
so why wouldn't she?

♪

This really is a city of bees,
and with 10 species living here,

I suppose you'd say it was
a very multicultural place.

♪

Spending this much time
in the neighborhood means

I'm even on first-name terms
with a few of the residents.

The naming just
comes to you, so Nicky...

I call her Nicky 'cause
she's got a nick in her wing.

There's another
one who is missing

half of one of her antenna,
she's called One-tenna.

And there are two others,

one of them is
called The Neighbor

because she lives right
next door to One-tenna,

and then there's another
one called The Late Comer

because she was
the last one to appear.

Alongside them, there
are two mason bees

which are much smaller.

One of them lived
right next to Nicky.

I called her Leia, derived
from her Latin name,

osmia lignaria.

I could call her Princess
Leia, but I just call her Leia.

If she's a princess, she
has a very small kingdom,

which is basically 3 tunnels

full of babies that
she's made this year.

♪

Throughout Bee City,
everyone is hard at work

finishing their tunnels.

♪

The mason bees like Leia here
also cut leaves for their nests,

but chew it in to
pulp to seal the hole.

♪

These red mason bees
use mud to seal up their nest.

♪

Leafcutters bring back
perfect pieces of circular leaf,

cut to fit their tunnel exactly.

When closing a hole, Nicky
will put literally 40 layers of leaf

in there all stacked up

to foil her archenemy,
the sharp-tailed bee.

The sharp-tail is a cuckoo bee,

and it specializes in
parasitizing leafcutter nests.

The sharp tails are
a constant threat.

♪

I think in Nicky's mind,
maybe 40 layers of protection

aren't even enough.

She starts going off and
looking in other tunnels

or underneath the blocks.

I thought maybe she's looking
for some little bits of rock

or something.

She comes back with a
stick, it's like 2 inches long,

and she's flying through
the air with this stick.

I mean, what is
she doing with that?

How does the stick
compute for her?

She's experimenting,
thinking it through.

Clearly something's
going on in her mind here.

Remember, this is a bee.

A moment like that reveals far
more than preconceived ideas

about what a leafcutter does.

♪

But not as odd
as I first thought.

This construction of grass stems

takes bee architecture
to new heights.

♪

The red-tailed mason bee,
nicknamed the tent-making bee,

has solved the
problem of cuckoo bees

breaking into her nursery.

♪

After carefully
picking a snail shell,

she fills it with both
leaf pulp and mud.

♪

Like Nicky, every stage of
the process involves decisions.

She spends a long
time to position the shell

into just the right
angle on the ground.

♪

♪

Even digging it into the
soil to hold that position.

♪

But that's just the beginning.

Next comes a huge undertaking.

♪

She gathers hundreds of bits

of carefully chosen
sticks of grass.

♪

To drive the stems
into the structure,

she vibrates her wing muscles,

which is why the whole
thing hangs together.

♪

Over three hours, she
assembles a huge structure

more than 20 times her height.

♪

Nothing can get
into this fortress.

♪

Back at Bee City,

Nicky is getting to
the end of her tenure.

She's looking a bit ragged now,

but she's still working
hard on her tunnels.

Inside, I could see how
neatly she's placed the pollen,

and this was
white thistle pollen.

There were no
thistles in my garden.

Where was this thistle
pollen coming from?

I watched Nicky when she
left, and I watched the direction

she went in.

She just kept going up in
a north westerly direction.

So then I looked on a map,
and I looked at the places

that, in that line, that could
possibly have those thistles,

and I got to a place
called Redling Green

where there were thistles there.

When I looked, there was a
bee pretty much identical to Nicky,

I was absolutely
sure that was Nicky.

When she flies out of her hole,

she has a mental
map of the city.

She goes to a place
she has previsualized.

She is going to go
to that destination

and do the thing that
she has planned to do.

She has a complex
world to deal with,

has to deal with mating
courtship, finding a home,

she has to forage,
go great distances.

She has to do
this all on her own.

She can't just ask
her mates, "Yeah,

yeah, seen any good
flowers recently, mate?"

And that I find is
the remarkable thing.

The more I became
absorbed in their lives,

the more I was
seeing differences

in how individuals
react to each other.

One-tenna is particularly
aggressive to everyone.

She always seems to be arguing
with her mason bee neighbor.

They seem to have a
tit-for-tat fighting thing going on.

Nicky and her neighbor
Leia just get along fine.

They never argue.

One-tenna... possibly because
the antenna are linked to memory

through scent... came back,

but instead of
going to her hole,

she went to the neighbor's hole.

She's got the neighbor's
jaws in her jaws.

She's trying to pull the
neighbor out of her hole.

This fight went
on and on and on,

and I mean I was really worried.

I didn't know what to do.

I thought, "Well,
should I break it up?"

You can't just interfere
with things like that.

It's never that simple.

But I really did
want it to stop.

These bees were clearly
using huge amounts of energy.

That story tells me that these
bees, they're not all identical.

All of them behave differently.

They must have some
serious brain power.

People would say, "Oh,
yeah, it's just instinct."

Well, yeah, but how
does the instinct work?

"Well, it's an algorithm, mate."

It's like, well, how is that
different to what we do?

It's really hard to explain,
but I really feel for them.

They're really... I could
say they're my friends,

but I mean, they don't
really give me much.

Every now and again, one bee

or other might actually
land on the camera

and that, I do feel
touched by that.

♪

I felt I knew Nicky
pretty well by now,

but I wasn't ready for
what she let me see next.

♪

She was well on the way
to filling another tunnel

for the next generation.

She then does this
extraordinary thing.

She turns round in the tunnel,

something I've
never seen her do,

so she has to form
a ball with her body.

Like a kind of gymnast doing
some kind of strange move.

And then when I pull focus in
to the hole, I could see an egg,

a great big egg.

It's huge. I mean, it's like
three or four millimeters long.

♪

I honestly never expected
to be able to see an egg

from the outside in that way.

What a privilege to be
there at that moment.

♪

I have been sitting here
for a couple of months.

It feels like a lifetime,

but of course it's not
for me, but it is for a bee.

Ridings: ♪ You left my
love, you hit the target ♪

Dohrn: I've seen Nicky
make three complete tunnels,

each with at least
six cells inside.

And now she's on
her fourth tunnel.

Ridings: ♪ I never noticed ♪

♪

Dohrn: But it
wasn't just me taking

an interest in Nicky's new egg.

♪

Nicky was by
this time very tired

and she was just sitting
on a brick, just a foot away.

♪

Ridings: ♪ And I
hate that you're gone ♪

♪ And I hate that I
don't wanna let go ♪

Dohrn: As the sharp tail
bee went in, I was willing her,

"Nicky, Nicky, come
up, get in your hole."

But, um, she didn't.

You can tell if a sharp
tail bee's been successful

'cause she'll come out with
some pollen stuck to her tail.

♪

Nicky went in.

It's possible she went in, saw
that it had been parasitized,

and thought,
"Ah, what the hell."

She'd had a very
successful nest-building life,

so I didn't worry
about her legacy.

She'd had a good legacy.

And that actually was
pretty much the last time

I saw her.

Ridings: ♪ I'm
gonna build castles ♪

♪ From the rubble of your love ♪

♪ I'm gonna be more than ♪

Dohrn: After she left,

I actually noticed
that I missed her.

Ridings: ♪ Oh ♪

♪ Castles ♪

♪ From the rubble of your love ♪

Dohrn: I had no idea that I
was going to get so involved,

if that's the word, with
an individual insect.

Ridings: ♪ You
ever thought I was ♪

♪ You ever thought I was ♪

Dohrn: It's changed my
view of insects altogether.

Ridings: ♪ Castles ♪

Dohrn: It's changed my
view of the world altogether.

Ridings: ♪ I'm gonna be stronger
than you ever thought I was ♪

♪

♪

♪

♪