Documentary - Movie Review - More Than Honey

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A 2013 documentary looking at the work of bee-keepers and the reason why bees are vanishing in dangerously alarming numbers. The results of this could mean more than the loss of honey. Flowers depend on bees for pollination, so the loss of bee could actually ultimately lead to human extinction too. Einstein is quoted in the film as asserting that humanity would be gone within five year of the loss of the last of our bees. In China with the bee population extinct in many provinces, the people try to pollinate flowers themselves but their rate of increasingly desperate progress is far too slow compared to what bees can do. The film was made by Swiss director Markus Imhoof, and the English narration is provided by the late John Hurt. Ranging from European hive keepers producing just a few hundred jars of honey a year to intense highly commercial battery hive farming, especially by Californian almond producers. The reasons why bees are vanishing vary; the very practice of breeding bees of a particular genus or sub-species tends to devastate other species, and also reduces a bee’s immunity to mites and bee-feeding parasites. General devastation of habitat, chemical sprays to protect crops, and other factor all contributes. The film shows some breath taking and often truly beautiful footage of bees in action, flight, mating and much more beside. Many bee-keepers try to buy bees of particular genus’s only to find that many are already infected by parasites that destroy the whole hive population. One surprise is that the so called killer-bees from South America, noted for their aggression and more dangerous stings, are often unaffected by the parasites and diseases affecting Western bees, and many hive keeper are learning how to farm the invading bees. Far from our potential killers, (a grossly exaggerated claim) they could prove to be our saviours. An amazing movie that shows why we need bees for way more than the honey we enjoy. Without bees we may well soon find ourselves short of oxygen. Arthur Chappell