Not to burst anyone’s bubble or anything, but the bee that torments Rowan Atkinson in Man vs. Bee isn’t actually a trained actor. Rather, the show used a blend of CGI bees and tiny, lifelike bee puppets to achieve its apian glory. The faux bees helped Atkinson and the team frame shots, plan out action and even have something to play against in a scene.

Many of Man vs. Bee’s puppets — and there were dozens —were piloted by Sarah Mardel, a talented puppeteer who’s worked on projects like War Horse on London’s West End and the film Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Tudum tracked her down to chat about what it means to do “bee choreography” and to get a look at the fine art of truly tiny puppeteering. 

How did you get into puppeteering?  A group of people that I worked with on War Horse have moved into this film and TV puppetry world, where we work very heavily alongside the visual effects department. You’re giving the actors something more than a tennis ball on a stick to perform opposite. Your puppet is alive, in a sense, and it’s got character. 

Depending on what’s needed, one or two or three or six of us will be working on a creation that can be used as a reference for the visual effects team. They’ll have something that is true to how big it is in space so that they know what they’re dealing with in post production. 

That’s how it worked with Man vs. Bee. I’m not there [in the final shot,] and no one ever knows I was there, but I had miniature little bees on the end of different-sized poles, and my job was to create a flight path and an eye line that simulates how a bee moves. 

Bee puppeteer Sarah Mardel (right) extends a prop bee near actor Rowan Atkinson.

When you first got this job, and they said, “You’re going to be a bee,” what did you do? I worked very closely with Rob Duncan, the visual effects supervisor, so I knew what type of bee we were using. Then I just looked at YouTube, and I looked at YouTube and I looked at YouTube and I looked at YouTube. 

I also chatted with Rob to find out what we needed to do, so when he knew that there were shots where the bee was going to be flying up to the top of a tree that was possibly 10 meters tall, he’d say, “Is that possible?” So I’d get an 8- or 10-meter fishing pole and go out in front of my house trying to get a [fake] bee to fly up to a tree, and just figuring out how accurate I can be with something that’s so far away from me. 

Then it was about getting in the room with Rowan, and with [director] David [Kerr] and figuring out what they actually need and want. If there was a scene where a bee and Rowan were interacting, we would map that out in the space beforehand, me and him. Then we would do takes with me and him, and then we would do takes without me where he was mimicking what he just did. Sometimes we’d go back and do it with the bee again, or sometimes they’d say it was worth spending the money to take the bee out, for the eye line or something or if Rowan nailed it, because he’s Rowan Atkinson. 

What did you learn about bees when you were doing your research? What stuck with you about flight paths and bee behavior?  I didn’t even know that male bees don’t sting, because my first thought with the show was, “Why doesn’t it sting him?” But now I know that when they sting, they die, so, goodness, the stakes are high.

I found out that the saying “make a beeline for something” is because in a beehive, honeybees will do these little jiggly dances to show the other bees where the flowers are. It’s like, “I found this amazing field with flowers,” and then they’ll do a dance that will show the other bees like, “You go this long, you go past there and then you go carry on,” and they’ll teach each other where to find it. Then they just fly straight. They will go as far as they can straight, and they’ll go fast. 

That’s if they’re going long distances, though. If you see them around, they don’t go anywhere straight. They’re so bumbling, and they get more bumbly the closer they get to things. You [can] see, in a roundabout way, how long it takes for them to land sometimes because they’ve gone all around the house to land somewhere. Then they take off, and they don’t take off straight. They go back before they go forwards, and they’re really heavy. 

Another thing I found out is that bees can squeeze in really small gaps. They’re really persistent. If they don’t get in the first time, they’ll just keep trying and trying. 

What liberties did you take with your bees? It’s a fictional TV show, so we’ll allow that your bees don’t have to be 100% scientifically accurate.  You have to serve the story, and I was there to make sure that we kept the bee’s flight path, especially when I actually did “bee-vision.” I would never normally be anywhere near a camera, but the bee-vision was the flight path of the bee. 

As far as mistakes or liberties, it would generally be that I would think, “Actually, the bee would go a roundabout way, probably like this,” and they would say, “Well, yeah, but we haven’t got time for that, so it just needs to go straight there.” 

There was one moment when we were getting the bee to land on the can of pea-and-ham soup. I thought, “He knows where the juice is, and that’s where it wants to go and lick and suck up the stuff, so I know where I want to land.” But actually, it’s about where the camera wants the bee to be. Story always wins, so that’s why it lands on the lip of the can.

Did you think about the bee’s timing? Did you try to add any comedy into the motions of the bee?  It’s the characters and the animals that are reacting to the bee that create the comedy. It’s very difficult to do a comedic flightpath. I’ll leave it up to the CGI team to put a bottom wiggle in there, or a glimpse at how a bee would clean its tiny little hairs. 

You mentioned that you were out in your yard with an eight-meter fishing pole. What were your rigs like on the set? Did you have different bees?  We had different types of bees. We had bees that were smaller than the bumblebee that we called stunt bees because they were basically bits of foam in the shape of bees, and they were black-and-yellow with a white bottom. Those were bees that I could poke wire through or I put sticky dots on so I could place them. I could also tie plastic wire around them so that Pixel [the dog in the show] could chew on them and wouldn’t bite wire or anything sharp. I had about 40 of those bees, I think, and we went through those in the 11 weeks. 

Then we had 20 bees that were almost the right size, but I think they were fractionally smaller. They had everything. They had beautiful wings that were really delicate, and they would break almost as soon as you picked them up. They had beautiful legs that were really delicate. Again, every time you’d pick one up, it was like, “That’s another leg lost.” They were even hairy, and they looked lovely. If there was anything that was really close up and the bee wasn’t moving very much, we’d use those. 

Rob also had one real specimen bee that was very, very delicate. They would use that for charts and light references so that we could actually see what an actual bee looked like in this environment. 

I also had different lengths of thin carbon-fiber poles that went from 30 centimeters to a meter and then two meters. I had a 3-meter fishing pole as well. The complicated thing was that most of the time, you’re not just flying straight into the shot. You’re wanting to come over the camera and drop into the shot. So I’d have to use the long fishing pole and then another pole attached at a different angle so I could get right to where I wanted the bee to come in, and that was the tricky thing. I had to know what angle I wanted the poles attached and also how long I wanted the drop. So I’d be there on the floor, taping and re-taping quickly, because the poles would have to be used in many different kinds of configurations. 

A closeup of a prop bee used in Man vs. Bee.

Do you think if you took your bee pole outside right now that you would pass for a bee — at least in the eyes of another bee?  I’ve always liked trying. Like, [when I was doing War Horse], I’d want to go practice horse noises with horses, because I feel like I can talk to them. With bees, I just started to see them everywhere, and I was fascinated. I could watch them forever, because they’re not boring. I definitely tried to perfect my bee sound, because it was really helpful for me. Sometimes I could even use it with Rowan if there were sound cues. When we were shooting, I even read a novel that was about wasps and bees. I was just trying to get in the mind of a bee.

When I was leaving, actually — a friend of mine keeps bees, and her son sells packets of wild seeds for the bees. So I bought loads of packets of his bee seeds, and I gave them to people as a goodbye gift, like, “These are the seeds for the bees, please!”

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.