Saturday, March 10, 2012

Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?

This delightful documentary from director Taggart Siegel takes viewers beyond the headlines (which most of them have forgotten already) about bees dying off in record numbers to give them an intimate look into the lives of bees, and the lives of people who love them. It’s kind of like getting a spoonful of sugar – or in this case honey – to make the medicine go down: you won’t realize how angry you are about the bee problem until the movie is over. And of course, there are plenty of extras in the DVD to tell you what you can do if the film moves you enough to actually get off the couch and follow-up. Maybe you will become a beekeeper like the people in the movie who raise hives everywhere from open space gardens to inner city rooftops. Maybe you’ll decide to boycott almonds until farmers find a more environmentally friendly way to use the bees they need to pollinate the trees. And if you ever wanted to learn how a Queen bee can be artificially inseminated, the film shows you that, too.

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