Watch as a worker bee is born

A worker bee's birth was caught on camera as it emerged from a honeycomb cell in a hive at disability firm Motability Operations, at the Gyle in Edinburgh.

Ross Main is a fine art graduate who now manages dozens of colonies and millions of bees across Fife – and they are all descended from his grandfather’s hive.

He sold some of the hives to businesses in Edinburgh and Fife so staff could learn how to become beekeepers and one of those businesses was Motability Operations, which now has six hives for their staff.

A bee hatches after egg, larva and pupa phases. The queen lays one egg per cell and after three days this hatches into a larva. After about six days the larva will spin a cocoon around itself and develop into a pupa, taking a couple of weeks to develop its eyes, legs, and wings. It then emerges into the hive by chewing through the wax capping of its cell.