More than Honey (2014) Documentary

Documentaries Central

Why are bees, worldwide, facing extinction? With the tenacity of a man out to solve a world-class mystery, Markus Imhoof investigates this global phenomenon, from California to Switzerland, China, and Australia.

Transcript

00:00:00(bees buzzing)

00:00:30(solemn music)

00:02:02(footsteps thudding)

00:02:13(bees buzzing)

00:03:14(ax thudding)

6 00:04:21,452 --> 00:04:24,035

159

(radar beeping)

(bee buzzing)

(radar beeping)

(bee buzzing) (radar beeping)

00:16:45(bee buzzing)

6 00:04:21,452 --> 00:04:24,035

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(machines clanking)

(solemn music)

When the bees swarm out

the colony is divided into two.

The commercial beekeeper beats the bees to it

and turns one colony into four

Brood.

Honey.

Eggs.

♪ Oh

♪ Someone to open up their ears ♪

♪ And let their trouble through ♪

♪ Now you don't have to sympathize ♪

♪ Or care what they might do ♪

♪ But everybody needs somebody ♪

♪ That they can talk to ♪

Each colony is split up.

Eggs

into four empty boxes like spare parts

thus mixing brood with other colonies.

Most of the queens die in the process.

New queens are delivered by FedEx

(bees buzzing)

(beekeeper groaning)

Things have changed rapidly.

We don't keep bees the way my dad did.

My grandfather would probably

walk from this property disturbed.

If he saw the way we keep bees today

he'd think

in the husbandry of the hive

and the care and the compassion in the keeping of the hive.

He'd say we've sacrificed our relationship with the colony.

But it was probably easier to maintain

that relationship with the hive.

Because he was running

We're running ten times that.

You know

we have ten times the property

we have ten times the square foot of plant and equipment.

We have ten times the trucks with ten times the power

at ten times the cost.

(solemn music)

(horn beeps)

(speaks in foreign language)

The black bees have raised

a new queen without yellow stripes.

On her mating flight she never left the narrow valley.

Her daughters are

(bees buzzing)

(fire crackling)

(solemn music)

(speaking in foreign language)

Mao once ordered that the sparrows be killed

because they rob the people of grain.

Billions of sparrows were killed.

The result was a plague of insects.

(bell dings)

It was fought with insecticides.

The bees also fell victim.

(people chattering)

Rumor has it that Einstein once said

if the bees ever die out

mankind will follow 4 years later.

I take a trip to the future.

I'm astonished to find regions in China

where they use so many chemicals

that all bees have disappeared.

They're not sure whether to let me watch or not.

(peaceful music)

No other country can afford to ask itself the question

currently being posed at The University of Beijing

who's better at pollinating

Science answers with a definite

(bees buzzing)

Here's what we've worked for all summer long.

We see this abundance of honey

Beautiful

It's done

Hey!

Mine!

They don't like sharing too much.

My thought was

Yeah

That's real good

It's traumatic

They don't understand it.

They've been flying in the fields for months undisturbed

and now suddenly someone came and blew smoke in their face

and took the boxes off and scraped their top bars

and handled them roughly

and the hive is a lot smaller than it used to be.

(machines whirling)

(metal clanking)

(machines whirling)

It's a four to five week lifespan.

A single bee produces about one teaspoon of honey.

For two pounds of honey a colony has to fly

three times around the world.

Bees filter out the toxins with their own bodies.

They sacrifice themselves so that the brood eats

only the purest of honey.

But traces of pesticides probably remain.

(truck rumbling)

(machines whirling)

(machines beeping)

How many Chinese migrant workers

does it take to replace the bees?

It took four billion bees a whole month

to produce these mountains of almonds.

Even vegetarians depend on industrial animal husbandry.

What's causing the bees to die?

Looking for clues

I come across the divine promise of growth

we learned in Sunday school.

Be fruitful and multiply.

Fill the earth and subdue it.

The massive death of bees is no mystery.

What's killing them is not pesticides

mites

but a combination of all those factors.

They are dying as a result of our civilization's success.

As a result of man

into docile domestic animals

But why do the bees put up with it?

(gentle music)

We flew around the world four times to make this film.

On one of the last flights

I remembered a story from Alice in Wonderland.

The story of the Red Queen.

The Red Queen grabs Alice by the hand

and runs off with her

and on

Faster

The wind almost blows the hair off Alice's head

but the world around her stands still.

As if the trees and buildings were running

Faster

until Alice falls down exhausted.

She looks around and says

But we've been under this tree the whole time!

Everything

Of course it is

It takes all the running you can do

to keep in the same place.

(solemn music)

(sires blaring)

One of the first people to pull up

to the scene

couldn't figure out why there was

a cloud around the accident

when there was nothing on fire.

There was a haze

And I was

Didn't know he drove

right into a swarm of bees.

Stung in the face a few times

immediately he ordered his crews

to wear full turn-out gear for protection.

14 people have died in the US since 2004

after being attacked by swarms of killer bees.

Killer bees first escaped

from a Brazilian breeding experiment

then

Along the way getting a deadly reputation;

allegedly killing hundreds of people.

Killer bees are a cross

between European and African bees.

Their correct name is Africanized honeybee.

26 swarms escaped from a lab in the University of Sao Paolo.

Are the bees finally striking back?

Or are they helpless in the hour of need?

Hey RenB! Hey, Fred!

01:11:30Came to get your bees.

01:11:32So, gonna have to take off this soffit here.

01:11:36You did say, I get a suit, right?

01:11:37Yeah, you'll get a suit.

6 00:04:21,452 --> 00:04:24,035

659

660

So if you need to go

now is the time.

No

You're pretty good?

Okay. Yeah, I think so.

01:13:18(drill whirling)

01:13:24(bees buzzing)

01:13:28Ready Fred?

6 00:04:21,452 --> 00:04:24,035

700

Yeah where is our box

See it? Yeah.

01:15:17Oh, I see that's

01:15:18what the string is for.

6 00:04:21,452 --> 00:04:24,035

722

723

724

Do a sweep.

I think we're in good shape.

(truck rumbling)

Oh

If not

(solemn music)

(bees buzzing)

I do have to wear a bee suit

I do have to have to work my bees much more carefully.

But it's easily worth it.

I know that they do make more honey.

And they make honey that doesn't

have any chemicals in it.

So that means an awful lot to me.

(bees buzzing)

Looking good!

Lots of drones.

The bees are not really native to Australia.

They arrived with the first settlers.

And over time some of them

And they got established.

So we have honeybees can survive without any human help.

which is very different from Europe

China

So if we collect males

that's what is Rodolfo doing up there at the moment

we can basically study the queen genes

because the males are clone variants of the queen.

And I always refer to our feral bees

here in Australia as a big bank account

A bank account where you don't have money on it

you have basically genetic variations of genes on it

and with the work which we do here at the moment

we basically try to withdraw some of our assets

and we use them for future bee breeding.

Well done.

Alright.

Can we have a look?

Yep.

Here you go. Ah, excellent.

01:19:32Look, look at this.

01:19:34It's really nice.

01:19:35Oh my God.

01:19:36Yeah, they're very lively.

01:19:37(speaks in foreign language)

01:19:40The bees still have a grip on my family.

01:19:44Now my grandchildren are fascinated by them.

01:19:48What will they be eating

01:19:50when they themselves become grandfathers?

01:19:53(bees buzzing)

01:20:01My daughter and son-in-law

01:20:03are doing research on the bee's immune system,

01:20:06at the University of Western Australia.

01:20:08Maybe the quiet one, Hendrick,

01:20:09the one sitting still.

01:20:11Here this guy.

01:20:12In a gesture of welcoming,

01:20:13they burn my bee suit.

01:20:15(speaks in foreign language)

01:20:17Push him in.

01:20:18I could have brought in germs from my trip.

01:20:21(speaking foreign language)

01:20:23This is where the last healthy bees live.

01:20:27A continent without the Varroa mite.

01:20:30(gentle music)

01:20:55Domesticated Queens are inseminated

01:20:57with the sperm of feral bees.

01:21:01To eliminate the risk of what happened in Brazil,

01:21:04the Australian test bees

01:21:06are brought to an uninhabited island,

01:21:08where they'll undergo a stress test.

01:21:14If they pass the test they'll continue to be bred.

01:21:17Perhaps even for the world market.

01:21:21They might, of course, mutate into Frankenstein bees

01:21:26but, at least they won't do any harm,

01:21:29it's too far from the mainland.

01:21:32But maybe the bees on the mainland

01:21:34become diseased, and only the ones, here,

01:21:38on the island stay healthy.

01:21:41In that case I see Noah's Ark.

01:21:44(gentle music)

01:21:48Oh!

01:22:33(gentle music)

01:22:52(beekeepers laughing)

01:23:17We seem to be afraid of

01:23:19foreigners coming into the country,

01:23:22even though we're all immigrants here.

01:23:25And so the African bees came,

01:23:28they didn't have papers

01:23:30they didn't have permission,

01:23:31they didn't have visas, or even passports.

01:23:35And there was really nothing we could do to stop them.

01:23:37They're completely wild creatures.

01:23:40They have not been domesticated.

01:23:42They are as they have always been.

01:23:46And people were very frightened of that.

01:23:51And then, when I went to Brazil in 1995,

01:23:57I found that the country had completely

01:24:00embraced the African bee.

01:24:03That what we have been told about the African bees,

01:24:08that they didn't make honey,

01:24:10that they were not good pollinators,

01:24:12they were impossible to manage,

01:24:15I found that all those things were completely false.

01:24:18They can survive on very scarce resources.

01:24:22If I were a gambling person,

01:24:26I would bet on the survival of the African bees

01:24:29over, just about, any other species, so,

01:24:36so, I think they'll be here after we're gone.

01:24:44(solemn music)

01:24:52(bees buzzing)

01:25:43The bees that I took out from the roof

01:25:45did not like their new nest and so they left.

01:25:48They swarmed.

01:25:55They will find a limb on a tree

01:25:58or something like that where they can cluster

01:26:00to take care of the queen.

01:26:03From that cluster the bees will send out scout bees

01:26:06to look for a suitable nest site.

01:26:09(bees buzzing)

01:26:52If a scout bee finds a suitable nest site,

01:26:55she will come back to this cluster of bees

01:26:58and she will tell her nest mates

01:27:00about the very good site.

01:27:04(bees buzzing)

01:27:09And then, when they reach a consensus

01:27:13then they will all leave together.

01:27:17(solemn music)

01:27:22(bees buzzing)

01:28:34Not even a bear could get to those bees!

01:28:38(solemn music)

01:28:43(bees buzzing)

01:31:11(solemn music)

01:32:18(solemn music)

Transcript

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