I just ate a teaspoon of Honey. I ate the honey, savoring every molecule, letting its remarkable sweet yet musky flavor arouse my taste buds and alert my body to the magic elixir about to make its sacred way through my body.
Did you know honey has medicinal and magical powers? I learned that this week and a whole lot more when I watched the documentary film “Queen of the Sun: What are the Honeybees Telling Us?” (2011; directed by Taggart Siegel). In fact, I so loved this film that I watched it twice, as it’s surely the best documentary I’ve ever seen, and one that I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in or cares about any of the following: Poetry. Dance. Ritual. Spirituality. Sustainability. Living the Good Life. Living a happy, fulfilled life. Flowers. Healthy, natural food. Beautiful places around the globe worth travelling to. Dotty, endearing people. Dedicated people. Courage. Hope. Balance. Making sure our children have a future. Making sure the world survives. And, of course, bees. For the central point of the film is this: Without the honeybee, the world simply can’t survive. No pollination, no food — that simple.
Today most of us don’t think much about bees except as something to be feared due to their sting. But this was not always the case. As the film explains, once upon a time and in cultures all around the world, the bee was revered and honored, recognized for its crucial role in the cycle of life, and beekeepers were highly respected members of the community.
Of course, I knew that bees pollinate flowers. But prior to the film, I really hadn’t been aware just how crucial honeybees are to agriculture (though of course, that should have been obvious to me). And though I had heard about Colony Collapse Disorder, I did not realize just how much this crisis threatens all of us. In the past few years, huge percentages of bee colonies have been lost in Europe and the United States, most likely due to the honeybee’s acute vulnerability to the effects of modern agricultural practices – growing acres upon acres of the same crop (monoculture), using very potent pesticides that are especially harmful to bees (chemicals that were originally developed as instruments of war, I was startled to learn), and using antibiotics that may be effective in the short term, but that have the unfortunate, back-firing effect of helping to create, over time, even worse, super-resistant bacteria to threaten insects, animals and humans.
I experienced the film as one revelation after another. Did you know that 70 percent of the bees in America are trucked to California’s central valley every year to pollinate the acres of almond trees, one of that state’s largest crops? Before seeing this movie, I was blissfully unaware of the “migratory bee” industry, and I found it shocking. Why is it necessary to bring the nation’s bees to California for two weeks, you may wonder? Why, to pollinate the almond tree blossoms. And why can’t California bees do that, you logically ask? Because there are no bees in California’s almond fields. Why not? Because if you have thousands of acres planted with one crop, which flowers for only two out of 52 weeks, and no other plants or flowers growing to sustain pollinating insects the other 50 weeks, then you have no insects. A monoculture is an insect desert.
Yet “Queen of the Sun” is no dry, depressing, polemic that rails against the self-destructiveness of modern civilization (though that point is very effectively made.) Rather, this beautifully filmed and edited movie takes you on a fascinating journey, revealing the intricate ways of the bees and their influence on human agriculture, a role that has been so twisted and subverted in the past 50 years that bees are in imminent danger of disappearing from the earth.
There are so many delights in “Queen of the Sun.” You meet colorful, alternative and inspiring beekeepers from all around the globe as they keep bees in natural and holistic ways. From Gunther Hauk in the United States to Massimo Carpinteri in Italy, each has unique philosophical and spiritual insights into their bees and is striving to keep their bees safe from pesticides, and the other causes behind Colony Collapse Disorder. You gain insight into the workings of bee hives and the fascinating social structure that one researcher thinks was the model for monasteries dedicated to sublimation of individuality and labor for the good of all. You observe the hives’ combs, with their hundreds of perfectly-shaped hexagonal cells, dripping with sun energy-infused honey. You travel to some of the most beautiful places on earth, and climb to the rooftops of London and the Bronx, where you meet practitioners of apiary husbandry. You witness the awe and reverence that beekeepers and scientists alike have developed for these magical creatures, and it can’t help but rub off on you.
When I was a child, our home had a Bible with an appendix that gave the meanings of the various names on the “approved” list for a Catholic baby, and I remember how disappointed I was to learn that my name, Deborah, means “bee.” I no longer feel that way. After seeing “Queen of the Sun,” I am now proud to bear the name of the most powerful queen the earth has ever known.
As one of the scientists interviewed in the film summed up bees, “These guys rule the world.”
To download Queen of the Sun from the official website ($3.99, viewable for a month), see streaming Queen of the Sun.
To see the movie trailer and for a wealth of information about bees and the film, including instructional material for teachers, see the official Queen of the Sun website.
To learn more about the biodynamic farm founded by Gunther Hauk and his wife, see Spikenard Farm.
For a lovely bee-related poem quoted in the film, see Last Night as I Lay Sleeping by Antonio Machado.
A nice bee book for children is UnBEElievables: Honeybee Poems and Paintings.
Weekly Cool Things 