Liverpool, bees, and a last night in London

A pretty early morning in Liverpool - which gave way to a torrential downpour as I made my way to the Liverpool World Museum. This is actually outside the Walker - didn't quite have time to drop in there ...

because I spent so much time in the Bee exhibition.  Seven weeks or so ago, when I visited Kew Gardens and was blown away by the Hive sculpture/installation, and decided that bees would, indeed, form the center of my book's conclusion, I started to read up about the Hive's creator, Wolfgang Buttress, and found that he was also responsible for the big bee installation in Liverpool - a somewhat irritating discovery, since I'd been in Liverpool just a few days before ... However, back I went, and it was hugely worthwhile.  Indeed, it was like walking around inside my conclusion, to a very similar loud humming-ish soundtrack, as at Kew.

There are roughly eight rooms: the first is very interactive, with lots of buttons to press to learn more about bee anatomy, or bee varieties, or whatever - much of it done through videos, so hard to photograph in a way that captures the effects of their changes in scale, in light, in depth.  One video of a cello was beautifully effective - the aim had been to use it as a beehive, and this had been successful for two years - until the bees perished, probably because of pesticides - so one's now left with a cello shell full of uninhabited honeycomb.

Coming to the section entitled "meadow," you won't need telling how excited I was to find it full of dandelions ...

... multiplied through mirrors.

The whole of the next, long section was intended to make one perceive the environment from a bee's perspective.

Indeed, I'm tempted to change out my USC homepage picture for this ...

Then a time-lapse video showing a bee's progress from egg to emerging.

And a very loud room encouraging one to feel what it would be like to be inside a bee swarm (as a bee).

Then we were asked to imagine the world without bees ... dead foliage,

and videos of flowers withering and fading to nothing.

What does it smell like inside a hive? - or rather, what does propolis, the substance bees use to mend and seal gaps in the hive, smell like? (put your head inside a skep to find out: unsurprisingly, a beeswax candle ...).

Then here are the sounds from over 30,000 bees, moving around as you move around in this particular space in response to your body, reminding us that we, bees, pollen are all made up, effectively, of stardust: wonder derived from the tiniest of things.

And the installation concluded with a slide show of all the ways in which one can help foster bees and their habitats.  I was delighted to emerge and find that Liverpool is doing just that, with a flowery meadow, outside.

And then back down to London for one last night, with a corner of the Natural History Museum visible from my window, if I turn my head sideways enough ...