Queen of the Sun

I found this documentary, like others I've seen on the subject of bees, to be very affirmative, informative and cautionary. Yes, the honeybee is definitely a very helpful friend in making our lives here on earth more tolerable. Besides being a fascinating presentation on all the man-made dangers facing the honeybee, this film leaves us with a distinct point of view and warning: it is our heavy reliance on factory farming and monoculture (one crop intensive agriculture) that poses the greatest threat to this collectively important domestic insect and the ultimate survival of our food chain. Here are some of the important facts discussed in this, at times light-hearted, testimonial to what bees do for us as cross-pollinators of crops, producers of honey and wax, and a symbol of all that is fragile in the natural realm:
1. Swarming is a natural way in which hives and colonies are extended;
2. Millions of bees die annually from colony collapse;
3. The sweetness in honey can last for centuries;
4. The honey bee is responsible for maintaining up to 40% of the food chain;
5. Over 30 million bees are imported to the southeastern US every year to keep the orchards blossoming;
6. Australia is one of the world's largest exporters of bees;
7. Pesticides are a major toxic threat to the survival of the bee habitat.
8. Antibiotics used to treat bee populations can find their way into humans through the consumption of honey;
9. It takes about 80-100 bee stings to kill a person;
10. Bees are one of a few species of insects where its males (drones) are programmed to devote themselves to propagating the line of the virgin Queen in the hive or nest.

This is the second recent documentary about bees and beekeeping that i've seen and reviewed, the other being Vanishing of the Bees. As you might expect, there are lots of overlaps between the two, such as the appearance in both of biodynamic beekeeper Gunther Hauk and of Michael Pollan, a leading critic of corporate food systems and factory farming. Both films target monoculture farming and associated practices, including pesticide use, as root causes of the "colony collapse disorder" which has become a major threat to bee populations in the past decade or so. Both regard the plight of the bees as a "canary in the coal mine" which should warn us that our own health is endangered by current agrobusiness practices. Both recommend that we find a healthier way to interact with bees, and give examples of better beekeeping practices. Both also delve into the cultural and spiritual aspects of beekeeping, along with its ancient and recent history.

The main difference is that Vanishing of the Bees focusses strongly on the problems of people involved in the large-scale industrial beekeeping business, who (since they can't make a living selling honey) are forced to truck hives of bees across the country to provide pollination services to the California almond industry and similar operations. Based on their point of view, that film has a strong narrative structure, tracing the course of the investigation into the cause of colony collapse disorder, and arriving near the end at a specific kind of systemic pesticide as the culprit.

Queen of the Sun has a more meandering structure which does not keep any specific subject in focus for very long, but gives more screen time to the beekeeping practices with are (in both films) presented as more healthy and natural alternatives to the conventional industrial approach. If you like this more vague and relaxed approach, it will work for you better than Vanishing of the Sun; if you like the investigative approach, you may find Queen of the Sun too rambling. But the take-home messages of the two films are so similar that if you've seen one, you won't learn very much from the other. I would certainly recommend seeing either one or the other if you care about the way we humans relate to the natural world, especially in connection with food.