Featured image: Stars Over Mountains - Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash The Concept Friday Night Experiments are those experiments and off-hand projects which actually involve doing something but that are tangential to my “real” work; or experiments I just expect to fail badly. The term comes from Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov who frequently held what they termed “Friday night experiments” – sessions where they would try out experimental science that wasn’t necessarily linked to their day jobs.

The Observation After a year of beekeeping, I started noticing something odd: the honey from my urban Manchester hives had a slightly different taste and colour than honey from rural hives I’d sampled. Not bad. Just different. Darker, more complex, hints of something metallic. Which raised a question: what exactly is in urban honey? Bees as Environmental Samplers It turns out honeybees are extraordinary environmental sampling machines: Foraging Range A single colony:

How It Started “You should keep bees,” my neighbour said, gesturing at the overgrown garden. “Pollinators need help, and you’ve got the space.” I knew nothing about bees. I’m a computer scientist who spends days thinking about web accessibility and human-computer interaction. I don’t have a background in biology, entomology, or agriculture. Which made it perfect for a Friday night experiment. Why Bees? Several things made beekeeping appealing as a side project: