Queen of the Sun!

Susan and I went on a beekeeper outing last night to see a new documentary about CCD; “Queen of the Sun”. Overall it was beautifully shot, interesting, thought provoking and quite inspiring - a bit of a reaffirmation of why I started beekeeping in the first place.

My gripes with it were that it was a little disjointed and there didn’t seem to be a progressive flow through the film, but that is only a minor gripe. My main problem was that it tended to marginalize and stereotype beekeepers – I bet you didn’t think that was possible! Yes, I know we all like “interesting characters” in our films, but looking at most of the participants you'd be forgiven for thinking that in general beekeepers were slightly weird hippies who believed in biodynamics, and probably astrology too! The only ‘normal’ beekeepers that were depicted (with one notable exception, and I’ll come to that later) were those “money grabbing, evil, factory intensive” beekeepers (that’s me demonizing them), who transport thousands of hives across the country in order to pollinate the monoculture of almonds in California. Well fortunately, most of us really are normal, honest! If only they had filmed at a few local beekeeping association meetings!

The film could also have made a lot more of the urban beekeeping movement, and how anybody can get involved i.e. broaden the appeal. Sadly, I left feeling that either you had to be a slightly odd biodynamic farmer (thankfully located away from any centres of population) or a dredlocked gay hippy living in a deprived city neighbourhood. There wasn't enough time given to the middle ground. Hey, but least the most normal beekeeper appeared to be the English (of course) city beekeeper and his step son!

Marks out of 5? Well on balance 3.5. It’s a worthwhile, enthusiastic film that presented a very serious issue in an engaging way and which left people feeling that there is real hope our pollinators can be saved, so long as we get involved, and stem our current thirst for industrial agriculture.