First reported in October 2006, the American honey bee population has been in catastrophic decline, experiencing record losses previously unseen.
The investigative documentary, Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us?, is an initiation -- without the apocalyptic pie graph visuals -- providing an essayistic structure on the cultural as well as historical significance of the insect, the hexagonal honeycomb, and its syrupy discharge. Filmmaker Taggart Siegel attempts, quite successfully, to locate the causes and encompass the potentially damaging effects of "Colony Collapse Disorder," the term coined by the scientific community in reference to the alarming decimation.
Most environmental disaster docs tend to follow the tired formula of sensational talking heads speaking of worst case scenarios. Queen of the Sun may approach its warning with a great sense of urgency, but the talking heads interviewed temper the sensationalism with in-depth discussion of the bee in human culture. The interviewees derive from very different backgrounds, from the conventional journalist expert (New York Times best-selling author Micael Pollan) to the interdisciplinary philosopher (Horst Kornberger). But most fascinatingly, Queen of the Sun takes the audience inside the world of beekeeping, from professionals to amateurs, including one businessman/beekeeper who only tends and raises queen bees. Siegel illuminates, beyond environmental concern, the fervor found in the men behind such an odd job. The multi-national beekeeping interviewees properly and succinctly elucidate the monetary challenges and destructive effects present in the industrial age of agriculture.
The reason for the bees' population loss seemingly lies in one word: monoculture. The practice of growing a single crop over a vast region, monoculture is the complete alteration and devastation of an ecosystem, a human attempt to seize power over the natural world's fickle variables through the implementation of machinery and insecticides, and the many resulting hazards that come with such controlling practices. Queen of the Sun takes aim at the largest migration of bees in the United States, that to the Central Valley of California. However, there is nothing natural about this migration. Hives are trucked across country. Once the hives are opened and crudely fed high fructose corn syrup, farmers pray for the imported bees to have enough sustenance to pollinate the man-made 500,000 acres of almond trees, the state's most profitable export.
What Queen of the Sun lacks in narrative, Siegel mostly makes up for with his camera. He films the natural world as in a hallucinatory trance, inviting the audience to take in the splendor of the bee and bee culture. The preservation of self, Siegel would remind us, is found in the preservation of the bee's flight. Their function contains the nectar for human life.
