After a two-hour canal trip, uninterrupted birdsong and James May putting a lawnmower back together, the “slow TV” phenomenon has taken a new turn after supermarket chain Waitrose jumped on the bandwagon with live streaming from a farm in Hampshire.

The live channel on YouTube cuts between bees buzzing in and out of a hive, a close-up look at the distinctive yellow blanket of a rapeseed field, and a third live camera offering a more panoramic view of the landscape.

It is part of the retailer’s latest marketing campaign which began last week with a “cow cam” TV ad using footage taken from a GoPro camera attached to a dairy cow.

The live streaming from its own farm, Leckford Estate in Hampshire, was also broadcast on big screens in some of the UK’s major train terminals.

The live stream on YouTube was typically being watched by more than 3,000 viewers at any one time on Monday.

The Norwegian pioneer of the slow TV phenomenon, public broadcaster NRK, recently unveiled its latest incarnation – a 12-hour uninterrupted look at the ebb and flow of the sea.

Unlike the canal trip and James May’s recent series The Reassembler – both on BBC4 – the Waitrose live stream has little sense of a narrative (one bee looking remarkably like another). Waitrose said the average viewing time was just over four-and-a-half minutes.

The campaign was created by adam&eveDDB and Manning Gottlieb OMD with the aim of showing Waitrose customers where their food comes from.