On the 24^th September 2023 the Bee Network went live marking the most significant change to the bus services in the Greater Manchester area since deregulation in 1986. Following on from our DVD featuring the first tranche, this DVD programme looks at the events resulting from the introduction of the second tranche, which the independent transport videos cameras filmed in April and June 2024. On 24^th March 2024 tranche two went live and covered Oldham, Rochdale and parts of Bury, Salford and north Manchester.  This involved Stagecoach taking over Queens Road depot from Go-Ahead and the Oldham depot from First Bus.  First Bus gained services in Rochdale from Transdev.  Stagecoach has introduced large numbers of new buses including BYD/ADL Enviro400CityEV battery/electric double-deckers and ADL Enviro400MMC diesel double-deckers. Rotala’s Diamond North West depot in Eccles sees the arrival of a good number of ADL Enviro200MMC single-deckers for Bee Network duties. 
   
Our filming begins in April at the busy Haymarket Street bus station in Bury with plenty of action and a good variety of buses to be seen.  A number of single-deckers are seen that have been obtained from various sources.  For example, look out for First Manchester Wright Streetlite 47609 (SN14 FFP), freshly painted in Bee Network livery.  On leaving First’s City Red fleet in Southampton it moved to Weymouth and then to Manchester.  Not long after filming it then moved to First Midlands and was allocated to Worcester before moving again to First Cymru and is now painted in the latest First Bus group livery!  Other interesting buses are the low-height Wright-bodied hybrid Volvo B5LHs that have moved to Manchester from Go-Ahead’s Oxford Bus Company. Seen in various colours from Oxford’s colourful route branding, these buses are now being operated by Stagecoach Manchester. 
   
Our next location is yet another busy bus station, this time in Middleton.  Here we see the buses arriving and departing in the bus station and running along the adjacent Middleton Way.  At Oldham we begin filming outside the former Oldham Corporation depot at Oldham Mumps, still branded as a First Bus depot, but now run by Stagecoach.  Further filming occurs at the town’s bus station at Cheapside before we return to Oldham Mumps Interchange to film the buses and some of the Metrolink trams passing by.  A short sequence is filmed at Rochdale bus station before we visit Manchester city centre in June 2024 to catch up on the action there.  Our locations in the city include Princess Street, Portland Street, Piccadilly Gardens, Shudehill and Piccadilly.  There is still a good number of Stagecoach buses running around that have not yet joined the Bee Network, but this will change with the third tranche when ComfortDelGro’s Metroline Manchester moves in to take over Stagecoach’s Hyde Road, Sharston and Ashton-under-Lyne depots.  In the meantime look out for Stagecoach ADL Enviro400 19470 (MX58 VBL), repainted in the white, orange and brown heritage livery of Greater Manchester Transport.  Our next location is Eccles bus station and then on to Salford Shopping City on Hankinson Way. 
   
Our final scenes are filmed on board brand new ADL Enviro200MMC 30685 (YX24 OWW), a 37-seat single-decker operated by Diamond North West on the 70 route to Eccles bus station.  There is a lot of change taking place and we hope that you enjoy this ‘snapshot in time’ of the introduction of the Bee Network covering Greater Manchester.