I'm not convinced - probably the programme will be better than the Telegraph write-up. That may say a few things differently.
If a single powerful heat source (44 C) was present, heating 70 cells around it, the nearest cells would be, say, 40 C, then 38, then 36, then 34 as you got further from the 'heater bee'. This doesn't seem to give the fine control of 1 deg (!) that the article says is needed to cause physiological differences in the resulting bees. Keeping a zone of air at a fixed temperature might be possible by controlling ventilation, but you couldn't use conduction from a few hot spots.
The other bit that sounds iffy is the 'job for life' statement. Some become Foragers, some become Nurse bees. This is completely at odds with all the books I've read. It also seems to be at odds with some of the artificial swarm techniques that rely on nurse bees becoming foragers as they get older: surely a moved hive (taking all the nurse bees, but having the foragers return to the original spot with a new hive in it) would just die out as all the nurses had to wait for 3 weeks+ before any new 'forager bees' arrived? This doesn't seem to be what happens by observation, or artificial swarming would be very different.
Just my thoughts.
FG